The Korea Customs Service (KCS) recently published its report on counterfeit goods seized by Customs in South Korea in 2020. The numbers reveal some interesting trends that may reflect the large increase in online shopping due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the report, there were 34,773 seizures in 2020, an increase of 13% from 30,856 seizures in 2019. 98.7% of these seizures involved either items sent through the postal service (89%) or express shipping services (9.7%), up considerably from 83.7% in 2019. Nearly 99.1% of these seizures involved some type of trademark infringement. The KCS also noted that despite the increase in number of seizures, the total weight of seized items actually decreased by 23% compared to 2019. The substantial decline in the average weight of seized items suggests that smaller packages constituted a much larger portion of seized items in 2020 compared to previous years. 

Seizures of bags (33.9%), shoes (18%), and clothing (17.7%) accounted for the largest portion of total seizures by weight, and the majority of these items originated from China and Hong Kong (94.5%), figures that are not significantly different from 2019. Interestingly, the number of infringing items brought into the country through travelers' personal belongings decreased by more than 90% compared to 2019, reflecting the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

These numbers suggest that the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 likely led to a large increase in online shopping by Korean consumers, not only in terms of increased ordering from abroad, but also because small online retailers within Korea commonly order goods from Chinese sellers to be shipped directly to Korean customers. As a result, the way many counterfeit goods enter Korea from China also appears to have changed – instead of large shipments of counterfeit goods being imported into Korea and being resold through various physical shops and markets, it appears that counterfeit goods are increasingly being imported in small quantities through various mail and courier services. This could have implications for trademark and counterfeit enforcement, since these small online retailers typically do not need to store infringing products in warehouses within Korea.

To combat this increase in small imports of counterfeit and infringing products through postal and courier services, the KCS is planning to expand its postal customs program, which it established in 2019, through which customs officers focused on postal imports categorize suspicious items, confirm the types and quantities of items, and report them to rights holders for authentication, with support from the Trade Related IPR Protection Association. Rights holders may be well advised to increase their monitoring of online sales in Korea, and to work with the KCS' postal customs program to enhance their enforcement efforts.

The full KCS report can be viewed on KCS' official website at www.customs.go.kr in both Korean and English. To view the English version of the report, please click on the following link: https://www.customs.go.kr/streamdocs/view/sd;streamdocsId=72059238243953855.