Korea Customs Service Implements 'Special Customs Clearance Measures' for Guanggunjeol and Black Friday

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] The Korea Customs Service will implement special customs clearance measures in line with the peak overseas direct purchase seasons such as China's Guanggun Festival (November 11) and the US Black Friday (November 26).

According to the Korea Customs Service on the 8th, during last year's large-scale discount events like Guanggun Festival and Black Friday, the volume of overseas direct purchase customs clearance surged by more than 75% compared to normal times.

Accordingly, the Korea Customs Service plans to implement the 'Special Customs Clearance Measures for Express and Postal Items' during the peak overseas direct purchase season from the 8th until the end of the year.

The special customs clearance measures focus on ensuring smooth customs clearance by expanding facilities and personnel on-site, such as installing additional X-ray equipment, and operating special customs clearance support teams at each customs office, including allowing additional temporary openings on Saturdays.

Temporary openings refer to customs officers temporarily performing duties on holidays or outside working hours to handle export-import and cargo-related tasks.

The Korea Customs Service expects illegal activities such as importing illegal or hazardous items during the peak overseas direct purchase season, reselling duty-free items cleared for personal use domestically, and underreporting by purchasing agents to be rampant, and will conduct intensive crackdowns simultaneously.

First, they will analyze risk information by country of dispatch and conduct focused inspections on high-risk items using scientific equipment such as drug and explosive detectors.

Additionally, to eradicate the act of disguising goods for sale as personal use to clear them duty-free, they plan to strengthen inspections at the customs clearance stage, including in-depth analysis of customs clearance records for repeat overseas direct purchase buyers.

A Korea Customs Service official said, “We will simultaneously expedite customs clearance and strengthen the crackdown on illegal activities during the peak overseas direct purchase season. Overseas direct purchase buyers should consider that items infringing intellectual property rights (counterfeits) may be held at customs and remember that reselling duty-free items purchased overseas domestically is illegal.”

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