Three busted for rebranding Chinese, Vietnamese mattresses as Korean-made for export to U.S.

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Three busted for rebranding Chinese, Vietnamese mattresses as Korean-made for export to U.S.

Published: 07 Nov. 2024, 14:35 Updated: 07 Nov. 2024, 16:18

Mattress with a counterfeit ″Made in Korea″ label attached in place of a removed ″Made in China″ label. [SEOUL MAIN CUSTOMS OFFICE]

A trio that rebranded Chinese and Vietnamese mattresses as Korean-made to export to the United States has been caught by customs authorities.

The Seoul Main Customs Office of the Korea Customs Service announced on Thursday that three suspects, including an individual who runs three separate import, processing and export companies, were apprehended on charges of violating the Customs Act and the Foreign Trade Act.

The group is accused of exporting 247,753 mattresses worth 7.4 billion won ($5.29 million) to the U.S. between December 2022 and October 2023 by relabeling them as Korean-made. They allegedly falsified the origin labels to avoid anti-dumping duties imposed on products from China and Vietnam.

Mattresses from China and Vietnam face anti-dumping duties of around 100 percent in the United States, while Korean-made products are subject to a much lower standard tariff of 3 percent. These rebranded mattresses were reportedly sold on the U.S. e-commerce platform Amazon.

Customs officials detected the scheme based on several pieces of evidence, including that the import and export companies operated from the same office, essentially functioning as a single entity, and that they had requested label-swapping services from mattress processing companies.

“To prevent cases of low-cost, low-quality foreign products being exported as Korean-made, we will strengthen crackdowns on origin falsification activities,” said an official from the Seoul Main Customs.

BY KIM MIN-YOUNG [[email protected]]