Korea Customs Service's Special Support Measures for Expedited Clearance of Chuseok Ancestral Ritual Supplies

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] The Korea Customs Service will implement a ‘special support measure’ for expedited customs clearance of ceremonial items ahead of Chuseok.

According to the Korea Customs Service on the 25th, the special support measure focuses on expedited customs clearance of agricultural, livestock, and fishery products such as ceremonial items, urgent raw and subsidiary materials, and overseas direct purchase express shipments, as well as timely shipment support for export cargo and prompt customs refunds.

First, the special support for export-import cargo customs clearance will be applied from the 29th of this month to the 12th of next month. During this period, a ‘24-hour special customs clearance support team’ will operate at 34 customs offices nationwide, including holidays and nighttime.

The core of the special support is to facilitate domestic supply of ceremonial items and urgent raw and subsidiary materials by allowing temporary customs office openings outside business hours and having the special customs clearance support team handle these requests.

In addition, if a request for an extension of the shipment period for export cargo is received, it will be processed immediately to ensure that export companies are not fined even if they fail to ship the volume within the period.

In principle, export companies must complete shipment within 30 days after export declaration acceptance, and failure to comply is subject to fines; however, exceptions (extension requests) will be allowed during the special support period.

In particular, the Korea Customs Service plans to enable expedited customs clearance of express shipments by organizing and operating special customs clearance support teams and emergency standby squads at customs offices such as Incheon and Pyeongtaek in preparation for the concentrated import of overseas direct purchase goods during the holiday period.

Special customs refund support will also be promoted ahead of the Chuseok holiday. The special customs refund support aims to relieve the financial burden of export companies between the 26th of this month and the 8th of next month.

For example, the Korea Customs Service will, in principle, pay the refund on the same day when receiving a refund application from an export company (normally it takes about two days), but if the application is received after the bank’s closing time (4 p.m.), the refund will be paid by the next morning.

Also, the customs office will minimize requests for document submission for refund review, and even if related documents are required, the refund will be paid first and the review will be conducted after the holiday (from September 13th).

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