Starting with a Korea-Japan customs chief meeting Thursday, the agency will expand cooperation with Central Asian and Mexican authorities, followed by Europe, the US and other major trading partners
South Korea is building a multinational, preemptive enforcement network at its borders to jointly crack down on counterfeit K-brand goods and drug smuggling.
The Korea Customs Service announced Tuesday that it will launch a full-scale customs diplomacy push with major trading partners worldwide, beginning with a Korea-Japan customs commissioner cooperation meeting Thursday, aimed at establishing a joint crackdown system for counterfeit K-brand goods and a framework for sharing drug-smuggling intelligence.
Through this customs diplomacy drive, the agency plans to broadly expand cooperation with customs authorities in key countries to protect the intellectual property rights of South Korean brands overseas and block the domestic entry of narcotics.
The initiative comes in response to a sharp rise in the distribution of counterfeit goods and drug smuggling that have piggybacked on the growing global popularity of K-brands. The agency called it a core countermeasure to proactively protect the rights of South Korean companies and safeguard public health at the border.
The Korea Customs Service said close intelligence sharing and enforcement cooperation among customs agencies is essential to eradicating the cross-border distribution of counterfeit goods and drug smuggling.
The agency plans to propose concrete cooperation tasks through high-level consultations now getting under way, and to translate them into a standing coordination framework at the working level.
At the Korea-Japan cooperation meeting — the first step in the agency's global customs diplomacy — Commissioner Lee Jong-wook plans to ask Japan to ensure that South Korean companies' applications to block the import and export of intellectual-property-infringing goods are processed smoothly by Japanese customs.
Japan's system for blocking the import and export of intellectual-property-infringing goods requires rights holders to submit their intellectual property information to customs in advance so that infringing goods can be intercepted at the border — a regime similar to South Korea's own intellectual property rights protection registration system.
Alongside this, the agency plans to formally propose joint border-level enforcement operations to protect the brands of both countries, and to hold in-depth discussions on a coordinated response to drug smuggling, including a significant expansion of intelligence sharing on the latest narcotics seizures.
Using the Korea-Japan meeting as a springboard, the Korea Customs Service will sequentially expand high-level customs diplomacy to major trading partners around the world, including Europe, Thailand, Vietnam, China and the United States.
The agency will develop tailored cooperation plans that account for each country's regulatory regime and cooperation needs, with the goal of building a tighter international network to protect K-brands and block drug smuggling.
Earlier, on the sidelines of the Korea-Central Asia Summit in September, the agency signed customs mutual assistance agreements with Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and MOUs on intellectual property protection cooperation with Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, laying the groundwork for broader collaboration. The agency also signed an MOU on information exchange and mutual assistance with Mexico's customs authority, maintaining close coordination with that country.
"Starting with the Korea-Japan customs commissioner cooperation meeting Thursday, we will continuously push forward working-level consultations and follow-up measures so that the tasks discussed do not end as a one-time event but translate into tangible enforcement results with overseas customs authorities," Commissioner Lee said.
kwonhl@heraldcorp.com
