US President Trump has launched comprehensive tariff measures against many countries around the world, particularly targeting Chinese products with tariffs of up to 245%. This has prompted Chinese companies to "launder production" through third countries.
According to Reuters, South Korea announced on Monday (21st) that there is an increasing trend of attempts to pass off goods as Korean products and then export them to foreign countries. The vast majority of these "fake Korean goods" are actually Chinese goods that are trying to evade high US tariffs.
The Korea Customs Service said that after a special investigation last month, it found that a total of 29.5 billion won (about 20.81 million US dollars) worth of export goods in the first quarter of this year had violations of origin and were deliberately labeled as "Made in Korea", which is almost 85% of the total for the whole of last year, of which 97% were exported to the United States.
Most of the laundered origin products come from China. The report said that these illegal products include battery cathode materials worth 3.3 billion won, which were imported from China and shipped to the United States, but the origin was marked as South Korea; in addition, in March this year, businesses also imported 19.3 billion won worth of closed-circuit television parts from China and reassembled them in South Korea to circumvent US restrictions on Chinese communications equipment.
Lee Kwang-woo, director of the Investigation Planning Bureau of the South Korean Customs, said, "South Korea is geographically close to China, and we believe that many Chinese products are exported through counterfeiting from South Korea." The authorities also believe that there will be more similar cases in the future; the department has set up a special task force to prevent illegal exports and plans to formulate more specific response measures to protect domestic companies.
Some analysts believe South Korea's crackdown is intended to win the trust of the United States and gain room for negotiation on U.S. tariffs. The U.S.-South Korea "2+2" meeting will be held in Washington on Thursday (24th), with ministers responsible for finance and trade from both countries in attendance. This is South Korea's first round of high-level negotiations to secure preferential tariff treatment from the United States.
