Online Alcohol Sales 'Illegal'
Sold Disguised as Interior Accessories
On the 30th, a post appeared on a secondhand trading site selling an empty bottle of whiskey 'Yamazaki 18 Years' for 130,000 KRW. When asked if only the empty bottle was being sold, the seller sent a photo of an unopened product, showing the cap was not removed.
On the 31st, posts appeared on two secondhand trading platforms selling empty bottles of the whiskey 'Yamazaki' released by the Japanese company Suntory. [Photo by screenshot of secondhand trading platform screen]
Recently, peer-to-peer whiskey trading has been thriving mainly on secondhand trading platforms. Under current law, online alcohol sales are illegal, but a 'trick trade' has emerged where sellers pretend to sell empty bottles to evade crackdowns.
According to a secondhand trading site on the 1st, various types of whiskey empty bottles such as Yamazaki and Hibiki are being sold for around 300,000 KRW. When a buyer expressed interest in an empty bottle of Yamazaki 12 Years listed for 310,000 KRW, a response came back in less than an hour. The seller said, "All the actual empty bottles have been sold, but the real bottles remain. You can assume the contents are inside."
Under current law, selling alcohol without a proper license can result in imprisonment of up to three years or a fine of up to 30 million KRW. However, since selling empty bottles as props is not illegal, the method of deception disguised as interior decoration is increasing. Sometimes, the phrase 'unopened empty bottle' is used to signal buyers that the product contains liquid.
The rise of illegal alcohol trading is analyzed to be influenced by the increasing number of resellers seeking profit by reselling rare whiskey. A liquor industry official explained, "In the case of Japanese whiskey, the price difference between domestic and local markets ranges from several hundred thousand KRW to over a million KRW. Since even selling one bottle yields a large margin, more people buy whiskey during overseas trips and resell it."
The secondhand trading platform side stated that it is difficult to filter out all whiskey sellers. They have been monitoring posts selling empty bottles priced in the hundreds of thousands of KRW, but some sellers evade crackdowns by falsely stating prices. A representative from Junggonara said, "In our application, we set restricted items as banned keywords to prevent product registration through pre- and post-monitoring," but added, "On portal site boards, some sellers list prices around 3,000 KRW but disclose the actual selling price as 300,000 KRW in the detailed description, making enforcement difficult."
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