Shocking! Nearly 25% of live streaming sales in South Korea involve false advertising, half of which are health products and cosmetics

It is reported that there is no regulation on life commerce in South Korea. Recently , the Korean Consumer Protection Agency investigated the actual situation of life commerce platforms and raised questions . It is understood that 70% of the opinions believe that it is necessary to strengthen the management and supervision of business operators .

Looking at the domestic situation in South Korea, the Fair Trade Commission formulated the "E-Commerce Consumer Protection Act" (referred to as the Amendment to the Fair Trade Act) on March 7, and will issue a legislative notice before April 14.

The bill includes the following contents: online platform operators shall bear the responsibilities corresponding to their roles and give consumers the obligation to provide assistance when they are harmed . This is a bill to strengthen the consumer protection responsibilities of online platform operators. Previously, platform operators took advantage of their "intermediary" characteristics in the sale of goods and services and neglected to protect consumers or evaded compensation responsibilities.

In addition, the Korea Consumer Agency stated that after monitoring 120 business programs broadcast by five companies , it was found that 30 programs (25.0%) contained a lot of improper labeling and advertising content. Among them, the advertisements suspected of violating the Food Labeling and Advertising Law were the most, reaching 14 (46.7%) .

In addition, there were 6 cases (20%) of advertisements that violated the Cosmetics Law by being likely to be mistaken for medicines , 6 cases (20%) of advertisements that used absolute expressions such as "lowest price" without substantive data and violated the Labeling and Advertising Law , and 4 cases (13.3%) of advertisements that might mistake ordinary industrial products for medical devices and violated the Medical Device Law.

Finally, a questionnaire survey was conducted on 500 consumers who purchased products through live broadcasts in the past year regarding the similarities between live broadcasts and TV shopping. The results showed that 81.6% (408 people) of the respondents believed that TV shopping and live broadcasts were very similar.

Based on the results of this investigation, the Korea Consumer Agency advises operators of lifestyle commerce platforms to educate sellers on advertising-related regulations and introduce a reporting function for sellers who fail to comply with regulations.

South Korea

live streaming

cosmetic

False advertising