{"id":8417,"date":"2026-05-08T03:37:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T03:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/8417\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T03:37:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T03:37:09","slug":"coupang-cracks-down-on-unverified-sellers-amid-fake-health-supplement-concerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/8417\/","title":{"rendered":"Coupang Cracks Down on Unverified Sellers Amid Fake Health Supplement Concerns"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ItemsItems to be delivered are piled up at a Coupang logistics center in Seoul. Yonhap News<\/p>\n

Coupang (CPNG) has significantly tightened its standards for selling health functional foods, taking the hardline step of removing unverified sellers. Amid the rapid growth of the online health supplement market, the move is seen as an effort to block counterfeit products and secure consumer trust and demand.<\/p>\n

\"null<\/p>\n

According to industry sources Tuesday, Coupang has required sellers of health functional foods and their products to submit official documentation since last month, halting product registrations and sales for sellers who fail to meet the requirements.<\/p>\n

Coupang first made it mandatory for sellers to submit business notification certificates or business registration certificates to verify whether they are qualified to manufacture, distribute, or import health functional foods. For each individual product, sellers must also provide supporting documents such as the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety’s product manufacturing notification, import declaration certificate, or labels. The measure effectively applies to all health functional food sellers, including not only Coupang’s general sellers but also “Rocket Growth” sellers, external merchants who use Coupang’s logistics services.<\/p>\n

The measures come in response to the controversy over counterfeit health functional foods. In recent e-commerce open markets, there have been repeated claims that supplements and other products being sold are counterfeits that copy the container designs and labels of well-known brands. In particular, suspicions have been raised that open market sellers based in China are distributing unverified products.<\/p>\n

Analysts also view the move as part of a mid- to long-term strategy to expand market share in the health functional food sector. According to the Korea Health Functional Food Association, the domestic health functional food market reached 5.96 trillion won ($4.4 billion) last year. Notably, the share of online sales jumped from 43.8% in 2019 to 71% last year. The strategy is aimed at attracting online health supplement demand by building an image as a “clean platform free of counterfeits.”<\/p>\n

The industry expects Coupang to expand direct-purchase sales of health functional foods alongside this measure. If the number of unverified sellers on the open market declines, Coupang’s health supplement sales could also shrink, so the strategy is to offset this through direct-purchase transactions. According to the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, Coupang’s health functional food imports reached $9.65 million (about 14.6 billion won) in 2024, up 17.7% from $8.19 million a year earlier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Items to be delivered are piled up at a Coupang logistics center in Seoul. Yonhap News Coupang (CPNG)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8418,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[381],"tags":[6516,426,433,2077,429,6517,6518,431],"class_list":{"0":"post-8417","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-coupang","8":"tag-counterfeit-supplements","9":"tag-coupang","10":"tag-direct-purchase","11":"tag-health-functional-foods","12":"tag-korea-e-commerce","13":"tag-ministry-of-food-and-drug-safety","14":"tag-open-market-regulation","15":"tag-rocket-growth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}