106 Businesses Caught Falsely Labeling Foreign Livestock Products as Domestic During Vacation Season

Criminal Charges and Fines for Businesses
Falsely Labeling or Omitting Product Origin

With the summer vacation season underway, a large number of businesses have been caught either falsely labeling foreign livestock products as domestic or failing to indicate their origin at all.

An employee is preparing pork belly at a butcher shop in a traditional market in Jongno-gu, Seoul. This is not related to the violating company. Photo by Jo Kyungjun jun21@

The National Agricultural Products Quality Management Service announced on August 9 that it uncovered a total of 119 violations at 106 businesses during a focused crackdown on livestock product origin labeling conducted from July 15 to 31.

Pork accounted for the most violations with 82 cases, followed by beef (15), chicken (12), duck (7), goat (2), and lamb (1). By business type, ordinary restaurants near tourist sites made up the majority with 66 violations, followed by 20 butcher shops and 3 meat processing businesses.

The agency said it has filed criminal charges against 53 businesses that falsely labeled foreign livestock products as domestic, and imposed a total of 12 million won in fines on another 53 businesses that failed to indicate product origin at all. The crackdown extended not only to restaurants and butcher shops near vacation spots, but also to online shopping malls and delivery apps.

Kim Cheol, head of the National Agricultural Products Quality Management Service, stated, "We will continue to monitor the origin labeling of livestock products, which are in high demand." He added, "Ahead of the upcoming Chuseok holiday in September, we also plan to intensify crackdowns on the illegal distribution of agricultural and food products used for gifts and ancestral rites."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.