Korea Customs Service Collaborates with Foreign Customs to Crack Down on Multinational Crimes Including Smuggled Cigarettes

Provided by Korea Customs Service

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] The Korea Customs Service has solved numerous multinational crimes, including the seizure of 3.54 million packs of smuggled cigarettes (worth approximately 11 billion KRW) over the past three years through cooperation with foreign customs authorities.

The Korea Customs Service announced on the 14th that from January 2019 to last month, the Customs Border Risk Management Center (hereafter Risk Management Center) contributed to solving multinational crimes such as cigarette smuggling through cooperation with foreign customs.

For example, since January 2019, the Korea Customs Service has provided 10 pieces of information related to cigarette smuggling to five major trading partner countries including Australia, Croatia, and Thailand, playing a decisive role in seizing 2.47 million packs of smuggled cigarettes (with a product cost of approximately 6.2 billion KRW).

Conversely, information obtained through the customs authorities of the United Kingdom and China also served as a clue to the seizure of 1.07 million packs of cigarettes (with a market value of approximately 4.8 billion KRW) that were attempted to be smuggled into the country.

This is a case of smuggling detection made possible through cooperation between the Risk Management Center and customs authorities of various countries. The Korea Customs Service emphasizes that for effective control of illegal goods disguised as legitimate trade moving between countries, organic information exchange between countries must be conducted.

Previously, in February 2017, the Korea Customs Service established the Risk Management Center to systematically share information regarding the cross-border movement of illegal goods with foreign customs authorities.

The Risk Management Center currently exchanges information with a total of 65 overseas customs authorities, with the number of information exchanges reaching 877 cases.

In particular, the status of information exchange by country shows active exchanges with major trading partners such as China (137 cases), Japan (130 cases), Russia (76 cases), the United Kingdom (58 cases), Australia (48 cases), and Vietnam (45 cases).

The content of the information exchanged mainly involves the production and exchange of illegal trade information concerning cigarettes, gold bars, waste, and rare flora and fauna, which are major targets of multinational organized crime.

A Korea Customs Service official stated, “Going forward, the Korea Customs Service will expand opportunities for information exchange focusing on trading partner countries with high trade volumes with Korea, while improving the quality of information through the use of various analytical techniques.”

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