Korea Customs Service Processes Transshipment of China-Origin E-Commerce Mail in Korea

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] A foundation for the ‘mail transshipment business,’ which allows e-commerce mail items departing from and shipped from China to be transshipped and processed domestically, has been established. This is expected to revitalize the mail transshipment market passing through South Korea.

The Korea Customs Service announced on the 2nd that it has improved related systems to enable the sorting of transshipment mail items at the Incheon Airport and Incheon Port hinterland complexes.

Until now, mail sorting operations were only allowed inside terminals according to regulations, making it virtually impossible to activate the domestic transshipment business.

Mail items are subject to the Universal Postal Union (UPU) agreement, and since cargo manifests with shipment information are not submitted to customs, there was no basis to move mail items to locations other than cargo terminals. For the same reason, the domestic transshipment market faced restrictions despite its potential for growth.

However, as the volume of shipments departing from China and delivered worldwide has rapidly increased and institutional measures to process them domestically have been established, it is expected that the scale of the transshipment market will naturally expand in the future.

For example, the Korea Customs Service forecasts that with the system improvements, the annual volume of cargo handled can increase from 10,000 tons to 440,000 tons, generating over 1,000 jobs and approximately 400 billion KRW in added value.

Previously, to improve the transshipment business system, the Korea Customs Service formed a public-private consultative body centered on related organizations and companies such as airlines and terminal operators, and visited companies directly to explain the purpose and significance of the system improvements.

Additionally, active administrative measures were implemented, including system improvements requiring the submission of cargo manifests to customs for transshipment mail items moved outside terminals for resorting.

A Korea Customs Service official stated, “The Korea Customs Service is pursuing various measures to support companies through proactive administration amid the economic crisis caused by COVID-19. The improvement of the system related to sorting transshipment mail items is an achievement made in this context.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.