'K-brand' Counterfeits Rooted Out, Technology Leaks Prevented; Ministry of Intellectual Property Presents Special Awards

[Financial News] The Ministry of Intellectual Property presented special awards to outstanding teams that achieved results in safeguarding intellectual property (IP), including protecting K-brands and preventing leaks of advanced national technologies.
The Ministry of Intellectual Property said it held the 2nd Special Achievement Awards Ceremony at the Government Complex Daejeon on the morning of the 26th and presented a total of ₩32 million in special achievement awards to five teams that led efforts in K-IP protection and diplomacy, helping safeguard the rights and interests of the public and businesses and strengthen the country’s standing abroad.
The team receiving the largest award at the ceremony, ₩10 million, was the K-Brand Government Certification Task Force (officials Won Tae-hwan and Seonwoo Han-mo, and officers Lee Seong-hun and Yang Geon-u). The team was recognized for establishing the world’s first pan-government response system to combat the widespread circulation of counterfeit K-brands in overseas markets, valued at ₩11 trillion. It secured a supplementary budget of ₩9.5 billion by setting up a coordinated response system involving seven ministries, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Justice. It also laid the legal groundwork to directly request that local authorities crack down on counterfeits and suspend customs clearance by pursuing applications for and registration of ‘national certification marks’ in 73 countries worldwide. The team also completed a technological safety net by incorporating cutting-edge AI authentication technology.
The Bilateral and Multilateral Cooperation Team of the International Cooperation Division (senior officials Kang Hui-man and Gam Yu-rim, and officials Yun Ji-yeong and Hwang Yeong-eun), which received an award of ₩7 million, established a new paradigm for intellectual property diplomacy linked to summit diplomacy. Leveraging presidential visits and multilateral diplomacy, the team increased the number of IP MOUs signed in the presence of heads of state 6.5-fold from the previous year (from 2 to 13). It also secured agreements on comprehensive cooperation with five Central Asian countries and a joint response to the malicious preemptive registration of trademarks in China.
The team of senior official Kim Ji-eon and official Jeong U-yeol, who established the foundation for a dedicated investigative unit to prevent leaks of advanced national technologies, received an award of ₩5 million. The team spearheaded the creation of a dedicated technology-leak unit comprising three divisions and an increase of 28 special judicial police officers. It also established a patent-based early detection system for technology leaks and a comprehensive protection framework encompassing prevention, investigation and control.
The Trademark Special Judicial Police Investigation Planning Team received ₩5 million for bringing back the ringleader and securing an indictment while they were in custody of a large counterfeit-goods sales organization who had fled to Vietnam—the first time special judicial police had used an INTERPOL Red Notice to do so. Counterfeit goods with an authentic retail value of approximately ₩3.7 billion were seized. The Application Intermediate Procedure Examination Team (officers Lee Mi-ok, Im Ji-yeon, Jeong Seon-hui and Yun Su-in) also received ₩5 million for handling 825 examinations per person per day despite staff cuts and a sharp rise in applications, while processing ‘ultra-fast prioritized examinations’ with top priority that same day.
Ministry of Intellectual Property Commissioner Kim Yong-sun said, “This is the result of everyone’s passion, from the policy departments that develop pan-government intellectual property strategies to the operational departments that support the organization’s work.” He added, “We will continue to actively support bold challenges to deliver results that the public can feel.”
Meanwhile, alongside the introduction of the K-Brand government certification system, efforts to establish direct cooperation with global e-commerce platforms to root out cross-border online counterfeit-goods distribution are also expected to accelerate. As sales of counterfeit K-consumer goods through global online and offline retail channels such as AliExpress, Temu and Amazon.com, Inc. have surged recently, the Ministry of Intellectual Property is pursuing plans to directly link national certification marks and AI authentication data with major platforms’ intellectual property protection systems (IPR Center). The aim is to shorten the time from counterfeit monitoring to listing removal and seller-account sanctions, thereby minimizing the actual harm to Korean businesses.
[email protected] Kim Won-jun Reporter