▲ Wedding street in Ahyeon-dong, Mapo-gu, Seoul
A mass number of wedding preparation service providers, including those offering studio photography, wedding dress rentals, and bridal makeup—commonly known as "seude-me" services—have been slapped with fines for omitting crucial information such as pricing, cancellation penalties, and refund criteria.
This marks the first time penalty procedures have been initiated as the government newly pushes for a mandatory disclosure system for key information in the wedding services sector.
The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) announced today (October 16) that it has pre-notified fines for 17 wedding service businesses nationwide that violated the Notification on Important Representation and Advertisement Matters.
Beginning in August, the FTC intensively inspected wedding venues and wedding preparation agencies to check whether they displayed detailed items and pricing for basic and optional services, cancellation penalty policies, and refund standards on either their official websites or the Korea Consumer Agency's Price Information Portal (www.price.go.kr), as well as on the cover of their contracts, in accordance with the mandatory disclosure guidelines.
The government's stance stems from ongoing grievances among prospective couples in the wedding service market, who continue to suffer damages due to soaring wedding expenses including reception meal costs, unjust demands for extra fees when using wedding package deals, and opaque refund and cancellation penalty standards.
As a result of the inspection, the 17 businesses were caught violating the notification by omitting prices for certain optional items or failing to separately display important information for each affiliated partner on their websites, the price portal, or contract covers.
The FTC has pre-notified the fines to these businesses and plans to finalize the penalty amounts and wrap up the enforcement procedures by the end of this month.
An FTC official stated, "This measure is significant as it strictly cracks down on opaque pricing displays and demands for additional fees that have customarily taken place in the wedding service market since the grace period for the key information disclosure system ended in May, thereby guaranteeing rational choices for prospective couples."
(File Photo: Yonhap News)
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