One in five consumer redress requests filed over online shopping failed to reach a settlement with the seller and moved on to dispute mediation. With South Korea's e-commerce market expanding rapidly, critics say the country needs a dispute resolution framework and consumer safeguards that reflect how online transactions actually work.
A total of 1,952 consumer redress requests were filed through August this year involving major e-commerce operators including Coupang, NAVER (035420), 11st and Gmarket, according to data submitted by the Korea Consumer Agency to the office of Rep. Park Hong-bae of the Democratic Party of Korea, a member of the National Assembly's National Policy Committee, on the 19th. Of those, 377 cases, or about 20% of the total, advanced to mediation requests after consumers and companies failed to reach agreement.
A mediation request is the final step in the Korea Consumer Agency's redress process, in which a case is referred to the Consumer Dispute Settlement Commission when a consumer and a company cannot reach a settlement. If both sides accept the commission's proposed terms, the outcome carries the same effect as a court settlement, but the mediation fails if either side rejects it.
The share of cases going to mediation has climbed steadily, from 9.5% in 2022 to 14.7% in 2023 and 28.7% in 2024. The jump in 2024 came as redress requests surged following large-scale payment failures at TMON and WeMakePrice. Last year the share eased to 25.5%, still 2.7 times the 2022 level.
By reason for filing, product and service quality was the most common this year with 475 cases, followed by failure to fulfill contracts at 425 and withdrawal of purchase offers (cooling-off cancellations) at 315. Complaints tied to product safety are rising in particular, nearly tripling from 26 cases in 2022 to 72 last year. This year 74 such cases had been filed through August, already exceeding last year's annual total.
In May, the Seoul Metropolitan Government tested 32 children's products sold on Chinese direct-purchase sites and online shopping platforms and found that 10 failed to meet domestic safety standards.
The growing number of disputes that end without agreement is attributed to the complexity of online transactions and the widening range of goods and services on offer. Because shoppers buy without examining products in person, disagreements over quality are more likely to arise. With more parties involved in each transaction, including sellers and platforms, assigning responsibility when problems occur is also difficult.
Park said practical consumer protection guidelines need to be updated to match the scale of the e-commerce market, adding that a dispute resolution system reflecting the non-face-to-face nature of e-commerce must be in place. "Institutional measures should be put in place quickly to make dispute mediation faster and more effective, so that consumers do not give up on seeking redress because of complicated procedures and drawn-out disputes," he said.