French luxury brand Chanel most frequently falls victim to widespread trademark breaches in South Korea, which continues to grapple with rampant circulation of fake designer products, a government report showed Sunday.
The market for luxury goods has been booming in South Korea in recent years, whether those goods are the real thing or a very convincing counterfeit. Estimated at about 15 trillion won ($13.2 billion), the luxury market is said to be much larger when counterfeit goods are taken into account.
Up to 1,902 cases of illegal counterfeit sales and circulations were detected from January through June this year, with 324, or 17 percent of those transactions, involving fake Chanel products, the Korea Intellectual Property Office said in a report submitted to parliament. Louis Vuitton was the second most frequently counterfeited brand, followed by Christian Dior, Gucci and Agatha.
The number of detected transactions of counterfeit luxury goods is expected to reach 4,000 cases this year, compared with 3,038 in 2005 and 3,503 in 2007, said the report.
Sales of fake merchandise are rampant in South Korea, with the International Institute for Management Development placing the world's 13th largest economy at 34th in terms of intellectual property rights protection among 55 nations last year.
South Korea is famous for its "super fake," or class A, designer goods, which are said to be perfect imitations of the originals and hardly distinguishable.
Seoul's failure to effectively crack down on piracy of luxury brands has been a major stumbling block in bilateral trade with the European Union and the United States, with over 3,000 counterfeit sales being detected annually since 2004.