Seoul – AliExpress, the Chinese e-commerce giant, has announced a plan to invest 10 billion won (approximately $7.6 million) over the next three years in South Korea. This investment aims to enhance the protection of intellectual property rights of South Korean brands on its platform.
According to Yonhap News Agency, Ray Zhang, the head of AliExpress's Korean unit, made this commitment in the wake of criticism the company faced for allegedly selling counterfeit goods on its platform. Zhang had previously been questioned by South Korean lawmakers about these allegations during a parliamentary government audit session in September.
Zhang detailed to reporters that AliExpress intends to establish a Korean-language intellectual property protection portal to provide quality assurance-related services for South Korean customers. He assured that products identified as counterfeit on the platform would be eligible for refunds without the need for additional paperwork.
Furthermore, AliExpress plans to form a dedicated team to protect copyrighted South Korean brands on its service. This move comes as AliExpress's user base in South Korea has more than doubled, growing from 2.97 million to 6.13 million as of October, making it the third-largest e-commerce platform in the country, trailing behind local platforms Coupang and 11Street.
In a bid to curb counterfeit trading, AliExpress has recently taken significant steps, including the removal of 977,151 products suspected of copyright infringement from its South Korean platform over the past two months. This number exceeds the approximately 420,000 counterfeit products identified in major South Korean online shopping malls from 2019 to 2022, indicating a concerted effort by AliExpress to address the issue of counterfeit goods.