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Photo courtesy of Yonhap News |
[Alpha Biz= Paul Lee] Nearly nine out of ten restaurants operating on food delivery apps in South Korea have been found to be in violation of country-of-origin labeling regulations, authorities said.
The National Agricultural Products Quality Management Service (NAQS) announced on March 22 that it had identified 119 violators during a 10-day inspection conducted from March 3 to 13, targeting online food sales channels including delivery apps and e-commerce platforms.
Violations were most prevalent on delivery apps, accounting for 103 cases, or 86.6% of the total, followed by online platforms with 15 cases (12.6%). The most frequently misrepresented items included napa cabbage kimchi (28 cases), pork (23), tofu products (12), chicken (12), and rice (11).
Investigations revealed that some restaurants falsely labeled Chinese-made kimchi as domestically produced, while others misrepresented rice cakes made with ingredients from Myanmar and China as Korean products. In one case, a restaurant in Gyeonggi Province was criminally charged for selling German pork falsely labeled as domestic on a delivery app.
To strengthen oversight amid the rapid growth of e-commerce, NAQS deployed a 450-member cyber monitoring team to pre-screen high-traffic platforms. Suspected violators were then subject to on-site inspections conducted jointly by special judicial police officers and consumer watchdog groups.
AlphaBIZ Paul Lee(hoondork1977@alphabiz.co.kr)
