Label Switching and Other 'Origin Labeling Violations' Uncover Goods Worth Approximately 28.6 Billion KRW

Numerous items violating origin labeling regulations, including those with altered origin labels through relabeling, have been uncovered. The detected items are valued at approximately 28.6 billion KRW.

The Seoul Regional Customs Office of the Korea Customs Service announced on the 6th that it conducted a “planned crackdown on origin labeling related to public procurement goods and daily necessities” last year, uncovering a total of 61 cases of origin labeling violations annually.

The planned crackdown was carried out considering the recent trend of increasing acts where imported goods are disguised as Korean products to be distributed or exported in the market or supplied to public institutions, taking advantage of the rising brand value of Korean products.

As a result, 42 companies were caught violating the “Foreign Trade Act” origin labeling regulations, including false origin labeling and damage/modification of origin labels (12.1 billion KRW), failure to label origin after splitting and repackaging (6.6 billion KRW), and misleading origin labeling (6.2 billion KRW).

Among the detected companies, two are suspected of importing mattresses produced in China and Vietnam, then relabeling the origin labels as Korean-made (so-called relabeling) and exporting the entire product quantity to the United States. The volume exported by these companies is valued at approximately 13.3 billion KRW.

A company that failed to label the origin on Chinese-made solar inverters and listed the domestic seller’s address on the product labeling, misleading consumers to believe the products were Korean-made (valued at 3.9 billion KRW), and six companies that removed origin labels from Chinese-made pet grooming scissors or misleadingly labeled them as Japanese-made (valued at 3.1 billion KRW) were also caught in the planned crackdown.

Additionally, seven companies were found to have contracted to supply public procurement goods such as work uniforms and electronic blackboards as Korean-made but delivered them with damaged, altered, or misleading origin labels.

A Seoul Customs official stated, “Seoul Customs will continue to focus on cracking down on goods closely related to daily life and those infringing on the value of K-brands this year to establish fair trade order.”

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