About 300,000 Counterfeit Products Sold on Naver in the Last 5 Years
Fake Perfumes at Half the Price of Genuine Ones Contain Methanol and Urine
It has been revealed that approximately 300,000 counterfeit products were sold through Naver over the past five years. Among these, some perfumes contained methanol at levels exceeding safety standards, which is harmful to the human body, and there were even perfumes that included urine to adjust acidity.
According to the 'Status of Counterfeit Product Detection by Online Platform' received by Assemblyman Jeong Il-young (Democratic Party) from the Korean Intellectual Property Office on the 13th, the platform with the highest number of counterfeit detections over the past five years was Naver.
Within Naver, counterfeit sales were most frequent through blogs, with 138,532 cases, followed by cafes (133,442 cases), Bands (14,926 cases), and Smart Stores (10,300 cases). Combined, this amounts to 297,000 cases.
In the Naver Smart Store, the men's perfume 'Bleu de Chanel' was found to contain methanol, which is banned under the standards of the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. Methanol is a hazardous substance that can damage the optic nerve and cause blindness. This perfume is sold on Chanel's official website at a regular price ranging from 135,000 to 158,000 KRW, but counterfeit versions were priced around 75,000 KRW, roughly half the price of the genuine product.
Assemblyman Jeong stated, "In the manufacturing process of counterfeit perfumes, animal or human urine is sometimes used to adjust the pH level." This is because using urine incurs no additional cost.
The platform with the second highest number of counterfeit detections after Naver was Instagram, with 293,554 cases detected over the past five years.
Terms of Use State "No Responsibility"... Passive Response to Counterfeit Transactions
Assemblyman Jeong pointed out that despite counterfeit transactions causing financial damage to consumers and posing significant safety threats, platforms including Naver are responding passively to the detection of counterfeit transactions.
Naver Pay's terms of use explicitly state that "Naver assumes no responsibility for the content of products sold or the terms of transactions." Regarding this, Assemblyman Jeong criticized, "Platforms like Naver earn astronomical profits through e-commerce, yet they shirk responsibility when it comes to counterfeit distribution, which is highly problematic."
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