98 Cases of Foreign Beans and Red Beans Sold as Domestic Exposed

Nonggwanwon Conducts Planned Crackdown on Imported Legumes and Processed Products

Companies that sold imported beans, red beans, mung beans, and other legumes and processed products disguised as domestic products have been caught.

The National Agricultural Products Quality Management Service announced on the 7th that it conducted a planned crackdown on imported legumes and their processed products from the 13th to the 28th of last month to prevent fraudulent origin labeling and detected violations by 98 companies.

The agency filed criminal charges against 56 companies that falsely labeled the origin, and imposed fines totaling 10.14 million KRW on 42 companies that did not label the origin.

As of the 2022 harvest, the wholesale price of domestic soybeans is 5,879 KRW per kilogram, while imported soybeans are around 1,400 KRW, showing a significant price difference. For this crackdown, information on companies that purchased imported soybeans and red beans from the Korea Agro-Fisheries & Food Trade Corporation (aT) and import distribution history data were used to pre-identify companies suspected of violating origin labeling. Subsequently, 9,287 companies, including soybean sellers, manufacturers and producers of tofu and soybean sprouts, and restaurants specializing in soybean dishes, were inspected with a focus on acts of selling imported products disguised as domestic.

The majority of violating companies were general restaurants, accounting for 66 locations (67.3%). This was followed by processing companies with 18 locations (18.4%), rest area restaurants with 7 locations (7.1%), online sales companies with 3 locations (3.1%), traditional markets with 3 locations (3.1%), and street vendors with 1 location (1.0%).

The most frequently violated product category was tofu products with 57 cases (57.0%), followed by soybeans with 17 cases (17.0%), soybean sprouts with 6 cases (6.0%), snacks with 5 cases (5.0%), red beans with 5 cases (5.0%), meju (fermented soybean blocks) with 4 cases (4.0%), rice cakes with 3 cases (3.0%), and others with 3 cases (3.0%).

Companies that 'falsely labeled' the origin will face criminal charges and, after prosecution procedures, may be sentenced to up to seven years in prison or fined up to 100 million KRW. Companies that failed to label the origin will be fined up to 10 million KRW.

Additionally, companies that 'falsely label' the origin or fail to label it two or more times will have their company names and violations publicly disclosed on the websites of the National Agricultural Products Quality Management Service and the Korea Consumer Agency for one year.

Seo Hae-dong, head of the National Agricultural Products Quality Management Service, stated, "We will continue to conduct origin labeling inspections to ensure correct origin labeling and establish distribution order for agricultural products. We ask consumers to check origin labels when purchasing agricultural and livestock products and report if there is no origin label or if the label appears suspicious."

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