hankyoreh

Torn South Korean flags affixed to the fence outside a health club in the Chinese city of Tianjin

“Resubmit the export documents after correcting the Romanization of the city’s name from ‘Pusan’ to ‘Busan.’” “Delete the hyphens in the date (10-03-2017) [which are automatically added in the country of origin system] and resubmit.” “Correct the format of the international notation of the importing country (China).”

A small exporter of South Korean machinery exported goods to China on Jan. 25. The goods arrived at Shanghai on Feb. 10, but they have still not passed through customs. Chinese customs agents have been delaying the goods’ clearance by repeatedly nitpicking over the composition and orthography requirements on the document showing the country of origin.

“Over the past six years, shipments have generally passed through customs in a couple of days without any problems, but with clearance being delayed for almost two months because of THAAD, we’ve had to pay millions of won in financing fees to take out 300 million won (US$265,650) in loans to pay advances to our parts suppliers,” the company said.

On Mar. 19, the Korea International Trade Association (KITA) announced that it had received 67 complaints from small and medium-sized exporters over the past 10 days (through Mar. 17) who said they had been harmed by retaliatory economic measures taken by China since South Korea’s decision to deploy the THAAD missile defense system. KITA has been collecting examples of such losses since it set up a hotline for trading issues with China on Mar. 8. The greatest number of complaints had to do with deliberate delays in customs clearance (23), followed by delayed or canceled contracts (15), boycotts (14) and delayed payments (4).

One South Korean exporter of industrial machinery complained that a Chinese buyer it had been doing business with for the past four years had not been making payments since Dec. 2016, for no particular reason. Another company had signed a machinery export contract in Dec. 2016 only to be abruptly notified of the contract’s unilateral cancellation in January, simply because the machinery was made in South Korea. Another company that exports processed food to China said that preferential foodstuffs such as chocolate and candy were basically being denied entry to the country after being suddenly categorized as pharmaceutical goods by the Chinese customs and that it had not heard from its buyers for two weeks. Another company that had brought goods into China to attend a trade fair in the country did not receive its goods until the final day of the exposition because of a delay in customs clearance. Because it was only able to display the goods at the exposition for half a day, the company suffered 45 million won (US$39,800) in losses.

By Cho Kye-wan, staff reporter

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]