Government to ban export of face masks

Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun bangs a gavel at the beginning of the Cabinet meeting in Daegu, Thursday.

Manufacturing, distribution to be controlled

By Lee Kyung-min

The government will ban the export of face masks from today, as part of emergency measures to curb the continued spike in their prices and a shortage of what many consider a daily necessity to prevent any further spread of the coronavirus here, the Ministry of Economy and Finance said Thursday.

The measures will remain effective until June 30.

The government will control the manufacture and distribution of the masks to help guarantee their availability at an affordable price to those in need.

"The country's mask manufacturers are bracing for weeks of overnight work to meet the rapidly increasing demand," Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said at a Cabinet meeting in Daegu, Thursday.

"The government will implement all measures possible to help the public feel that masks are being made available fairly to those in need."

The administration plans to ease rules on daily mask manufacturing limits and the market supply of melt-blown fabric — the raw material needed to make masks.

It said that this will prevent further shortage-induced price hikes, and help increase the daily combined output of the country's 140 mask manufacturers to nearly 11 million — almost double the 6.5 million, Jan.30.

To prevent hoarding, maximum weekly purchases will be strictly limited to two per person starting March 9, using an electronic purchase and storage system run by the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service. Purchases will be prohibited without an ID.

Those whose year of birth ends in either one or six can buy them on Mondays; two or seven on Tuesdays; three or eight on Wednesdays; four or nine on Thursdays and five or zero on Fridays. People that did not buy masks on weekdays will be allowed to do so on weekends.

For the remainder of this week, however, people will be able to buy up to two each over the three-day period. Hoarded masks seized by the investigative authorities will be immediately released for sale at pharmacies, post offices and Nonghyup Bank's Hanaro marts nationwide — places that will not implement profit margin-oriented price hikes.

The first to receive the masks will be those in regions hit hardest by the virus spread and infections, as well as medical, quarantine and disinfection professionals and the underprivileged.

Meanwhile, the export ban comes after the government instituted a strict measure to limit the export of masks to 10 percent of the domestically produced maximum, Feb. 26.

The limit, which was introduced to help increase the domestic circulation of masks, came after an earlier measure Feb. 5 to criminally punish mask hoarders failed to either stabilize supplies or normalize the nearly four-fold increase in the price of single-use masks.

Under the revised law, the "illicit mass purchase" of face masks is punishable by up to two years in prison or a fine of up to 20 million won ($18,000).

A recent National Tax Service investigation showed that a group of online sellers that hoarded masks, and brokers that exported them overseas netted hundreds of millions of won in profit.

Most of these middlemen and brokers are said to have bought masks for between 300 won and 800 won each and sold them for up to 5,000 won. Some are still being sold at over 6,000 won online.

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