"Chanel" No. 1 fake brand in S. Korea: report

By Shin Hae-in
SEOUL, Sept. 21 (Yonhap) -- 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 (US$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.
hayney@yna.co.kr
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