Chinese online shopping platforms AliExpress, Temu, Shine and other overseas business operators over a certain size will be required to have representatives in Korea. This new policy is aimed at making them responsible for consumer protection.
Unlike AliExpress, which currently has a legal entity in Korea, Temu and Shein do not have any sales offices or customer service centers in Korea, making it difficult for Korean consumers to resolve complaints or receive compensation for damages. In addition, even when authorities such as those of the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) or the Korea Consumer Agency investigate, they can only conduct simple written investigations, limiting their ability in actively looking into cases involving them.
The KFTC announced the Consumer Protection Measures for Overseas Online Platforms at the Emergency Economic Ministerial Meeting chaired by Choi Sang-mok, deputy prime minister for economic affairs and minister of strategy and finance on March 13. The measures are designed to prevent a spate of consumer damage cases due to a sharp increase in new consumers who use overseas online shopping platforms.
First, the Korean government will amend the Electronic Commerce Act to make it mandatory for overseas business operators over a certain size to designate Korean agents to fulfill their consumer protection obligations. The Korean agents will be in charge of consumer damage relief and dispute resolution and will be subject to document delivery and investigations related to the enforcement of the Electronic Commerce Act.
Korean ministries and offices will jointly respond to four major areas of concern for consumers -- dangerous food and drugs, fake goods, harmful media for youths,d and violations of personal information collection and use law.
The Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety will strengthen its management activities by requesting ad blocking and special inspections on overseas online platforms to counter the illegal distribution of harmful food and drugs and unfair advertisements about them. The Korean Intellectual Property Office and Korea Customs Service will strengthen the detection of counterfeit goods at the customs clearance stage of Koreans’ cross-border shopping and the Korean government will introduce a self-regulation system in which overseas online shopping platforms take follow-up measures and reply with the results when the Korean government provides the details of counterfeit goods monitoring.
What’s more, the Korean government will strengthen checks on whether overseas online platforms have implemented youth protection measures such as age and identity verification when selling adult products to block harmful media from falling into hands of young people and will take measures to prevent Koreans’ personal information from being leaked abroad through overseas online shopping platforms.