Watch out for fake K-food products
Copycats of iconic Korean food products are being sold in China and elsewhere, with deceiving packaging
Can you tell if this is real Buldak Spicy Chicken Ramen or a knockoff?
It is a fake -- not genuine -- Samyang Foods product. The real one bears the Samyang Foods logo, while this one has a "Bingoone" logo instead.
According to Seo Kyoung-duk, a liberal arts professor at Sungshin Women's University who is most known for campaigning to promote Korean culture overseas on Tuesday, this is just one of many knockoffs of Buldak instant noodles currently being sold in China.
He pointed out that the characters and fonts on the counterfeit products are almost identical to the originals, making them highly deceptive.
'The Chinese sellers even duplicated the 'KOREA' and 'Halal' logos, making it hard for overseas consumers to tell apart a genuine product from a fake one," Seo wrote on his Facebook account.
According to him, some of the fake products he found feature the wrong company name. Other packages bear a "Made in P.R.C." mark on the back, referring to the People's Republic of China.
Samyang's Buldak is just one of many iconic processed Korean food products being forged across the globe. As Korean food brands expand their presence overseas, the rise of counterfeit goods is growing as a concern.
In Vietnam and Thailand, imitations of well-known Korean soju brand Cham Isul have been sold at prices 30 percent lower than the original products. Some replicas, packaged in green bottles with Korean-language labels and official website addresses in the Korean format, are almost identical to the real items.
Last year, the Korea Intellectual Property Protection Agency blocked a total of 191,971 copycat items from being sold online overseas, a 19 percent increase from the previous year, according to data from the Korea Intellectual Property Office released on March 21.
As part of efforts to tackle counterfeit K-food products, major food companies, including Samyang Foods, CJ CheilJedang and Ottogi, launched a joint task force with the Korea Food Industry Association and the Korea Intellectual Property Office in 2021. The group is committed to investigating both online and offline distribution channels of counterfeit Korean food products and issuing warnings to overseas sellers of fake goods.
"While the US and the EU have strong national measures and international cooperation to tackle counterfeits, South Korea still lacks a comprehensive system to protect intellectual property. The damage to a brand's image caused by fake product goes beyond just financial losses. It could create negative perceptions about the entire K-Food sector," said Sohyung Kim, a consultant at Davis & Company.
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