Marking Systems for Country of Origin for online shopping malls greatly differ, depending on item of goods

- Marking System for Country of Origin should be set up for telemarketing, mail order, and online-shopping malls -   

Marking systems for country of origin for goods sold at online shopping malls were found to have vast difference depending on item of goods.

 The Korea Consumer Agency (President: Young-seen Kim, www.kca.go.kr) monitored marking systems for country of origin for 795 kinds of goods (including agricultural and marine products, cosmetics, and furniture) sold at online shopping malls and found that 17.2% of the targeted items failed to mark country of origin. Whereas the ratio of marking country of origin for agricultural and marine products, which have a regulation for marking system for country of origin for telemarketing as a whole, stood at 94.3% on average, that for furniture and cosmetics, which do not have the regulation in place, marked 73.0% and low 59.3%, respectively.

According to relevant standards, the country of origin should be marked from when a product is introduced, 17.6% (116 items) failed to observe the standards and displayed name and price of the product first, and showed the country of origin later.

Meanwhile, 40.6% (267 items) used a smaller font for country of origin than that for name of product or price, while 4.1% (27 items) failed to mark country of origin in Korean.

Also, a different color was used for words for country of origin for 12.0% (79 items) from the rest words for product name and price. While a dark color was mostly used for product name and price, a color for country of origin was nor dark nor prominent.

Based on these findings, the Agency argued that standards should be set up for all the items including imported goods, cosmetics, and industrial goods, besides domestic agricultural and marine products, which already have marking standards for country of origin for telemarketing in lace, by reflecting the trend of growing e-commerce. Also, the KCA continued to emphasize that supplementary legislations are needed in this regard such as making it obligatory to mark country of origin in Korean for imported goods (for now, it is optional) and improving marking methods for country of origin for livestock products and make a recommendation of system improvement to relevant authorities.