More than 3 tln won in knockoffs smuggled into the country since 2011: report

More than 3 trillion won ($2.73 billion) in luxury brand knockoffs, most of them from China, were caught while being smuggled into the country over the past five years, with watches replacing handbags as the most popular items, tallies from the customs agency showed Wednesday.

Records given to the parliamentary finance committee by the Korea Customs Service said the agency nabbed 3,088 smuggling cases involving fake goods, amounting to 3.24 trillion won.

Fake watches accounted for 987.7 billion won. Handbags came next at 718.4 billion won, followed by Viagra and the like at 435.8 billion won, records showed.  Smuggling of knockoff timepieces more than doubled from 111.6 billion won in 2011 to 255 billion won in 2015, while the popularity of copied handbags dropped from 225.5 billion won to 37.6 billion won.

French brand Louis Vuitton was the most copied brand during the period. Rolex, Chanel, Cartier and Burberry followed in that order.

Nike was the only sports label included in the top 10.

Almost all of the smuggled products, 96.5 percent, were inbound. Only 3.5 percent were outbound. Records showed 95.1 percent of the inbound replicas came from China. (Yonhap)