SEOUL: South Korea has found rising attempts to disguise foreign products as Korean exports, mostly from China, to avoid US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, its customs agency said on Monday (Apr 21).
The Korea Customs Service said it has found 29.5 billion won (US$20.81 million) worth of country-of-origin violations from the first quarter, with US-bound shipments accounting for 97 per cent of the total, after a special probe last month.
That compared to a total of 34.8 billion won worth of violations for all of 2024, among which US-bound shipments accounted for 62 per cent.
Since taking office in January, Trump has introduced big tariffs on various products and countries that started to come into force in March.
South Korean officials have said there could be a rise in attempts by foreign companies, such as those in neighbouring China, to use South Korea, which is a major US ally and has a free-trade pact, as a bypass to avoid tariffs and regulations.
Trump slapped 25 per cent tariffs on South Korea this month, which were later suspended for three months. The US now imposes 145 per cent tariffs on China after back-and-forth retaliatory actions, which economists say have severed trade between the world’s two biggest economies.
Monday’s findings include 3.3 billion won worth of cathode materials used for batteries, imported from China and shipped to the US with South Korea falsely marked as the country of origin, to avoid already high tariffs in January even before Trump’s tariffs took effect.
In March, 19.3 billion won worth of surveillance cameras were imported from China in parts and reassembled in South Korea to bypass US restrictions on Chinese communication devices.
The Korea Customs Service has launched a special task force to prevent illegal export attempts and plans to come up with more specific response measures to protect domestic companies.
