Relief of Administrative Sanctions for Freight Forwarders Violating Customs Act

Provided by Korea Customs Service

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] The administrative sanctions burden on freight forwarding operators who violate the Customs Act will be eased. The system will be revised to lower the level of administrative sanctions that have been excessively applied so far.

The Korea Customs Service announced that the amendment to the "Notice on Registration and Management of Freight Forwarding Operators" will be implemented from the 19th of this month.

According to the Korea Customs Service, the Customs Act specifies the level of punishment in detail according to the severity of violations, including imprisonment or fines, fines only, and mitigation for negligent offenses.

However, in the case of freight forwarding operators, when violating the Customs Act, they have uniformly received administrative sanctions such as business suspension for a certain period (or fines equivalent to business suspension).

Even if the violation was relatively minor, such as a negligent offense or reporting violation, freight forwarding operators were treated the same as intentional offenders or smugglers.

There have been strong calls in the field to adjust the level of sanctions to be fair.

Accordingly, through the amendment, the Korea Customs Service will subdivide the level of administrative sanctions applied to freight forwarding operators, easing the burden by issuing a first warning for violations detected due to simple negligence, and imposing business suspension from the second violation onward (with a shortened period compared to before).

In addition, the Korea Customs Service emphasized that by applying the investigation methods and procedures of the Administrative Investigation Basic Act during customs officers' inspections of changes in freight forwarding operators' registration details, the burden of administrative investigations on companies and the public has also been reduced.

Freight forwarding operators are those who engage in the business of arranging cargo transportation under the Customs Act, acting on behalf of the shipper by handling all transportation-related tasks until the export/import cargo is delivered to the consignee.

Kim Han-jin, head of the Export and Import Safety Inspection Division at the Korea Customs Service, said, "Freight forwarding operators are customs administration partners who are involved in the entire process of domestic and international export/import logistics flow and contribute to the smooth movement of logistics. The Korea Customs Service expects that by reasonably adjusting the level of administrative sanctions on freight forwarding operators and easing their burden, it will contribute to the promotion of domestic and international logistics."

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