The South Korean cabinet approved a comprehensive reform of its e-commerce regulatory framework, which came into effect on July 21. The central objective is to close the enforcement gap that had allowed Chinese platforms such as Temu, AliExpress, and Shein to sell to tens of millions of Korean consumers while remaining virtually beyond the reach of local regulators.
The most structural change of the decree is the obligation to appoint a local representative in Korea. Foreign platforms exceeding the user or sales thresholds established by the regulation will have until January 21, 2027, to designate a person on Korean soil who will be accountable to the Korea Fair Trade Commission, handle consumer complaints, and receive official notifications. AliExpress, with over 9 million monthly active users in Korea, almost certainly exceeds that threshold. Temu and AliExpress combined recorded approximately 16.5 million monthly active users in the first quarter of 2026, approaching local market leader Coupang, which has 33 million.
What changes with this representative is fundamental. Until now, the KFTC could issue orders against platforms operated from China and incorporated in Singapore, but it had no efficient way to enforce them. The designation of a Korean representative creates a jurisdictional point of contact: a person on Korean soil, subject to local law, to whom orders can be notified, documents demanded, and sanctions applied. Non-compliance by the representative is directly attributed to the foreign platform.
What came into effect on July 21 includes three additional obligations. First, consumer-to-consumer transaction platforms must verify and disclose seller identities, with the required data reduced from five to two to facilitate individual operations. Second, any platform that allows consumer reviews must disclose how they are collected, how long they remain published, the rating criteria, and removal procedures. Third, the sanctions framework was tightened: the penalty ceiling for repeat offenses was doubled to 100%, while the maximum discount for voluntary corrective action was reduced to only 10%, eliminating the strategy of waiting for an infringement and reporting it later to obtain a significant reduction.
The context that led to this reform is concrete. An investigation by the Korea Customs Service into 404 products sold on AliExpress and Temu found that 96, 23.8% of those tested, contained cadmium and lead in concentrations up to 700 times the Korean legal thresholds. The Seoul Metropolitan Government tested 26 children's winter garments from Temu, AliExpress, and Shein: seven failed. A jacket from Temu contained phthalate plasticizers at 622 times the legal limit. Regarding data, the Personal Information Protection Commission fined AliExpress in 2024 for transferring Korean consumer data to approximately 180,000 sellers in China without the required consent procedures.
The Korean model is being observed by regulators in Japan, Australia, and Singapore who face the same enforcement void but do not have the EU's customs infrastructure or the US's legislative basis to replicate their approaches. What Korea offers is a simpler mechanism: a person on local soil who responds under local law. It does not require bilateral cooperation with China, does not depend on cross-border data exchange agreements, and does not need a treaty. It is the same structural logic that international commercial law has used for centuries to make foreign actors accessible to local courts.
For the next+ team, the Korean decree is relevant beyond Asia because it establishes a replicable regulatory model that other markets can adopt without the infrastructure required by the European or US approaches. For e-commerce platforms and marketplaces operating in Latin America with similar cross-border structures, the question this decree raises is not whether something like this will come to the region, but when. Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia have already begun discussions on regulating foreign digital platforms. The Korean precedent offers a concrete roadmap: a local representative with real authority, transparency obligations for reviews and seller verification, and a sanctions regime that makes non-compliance costly. For any global platform operating with millions of users in a market without a local legal presence, the decree's message is direct: that operating model's days are numbered.