"Half the Price in Korea": Surge in Illegal Imports and Counterfeit "Mounjaro" Products

[Anchor]

Cases of obesity treatments such as Mounjaro and Wegovy being caught while being brought in from abroad or purchased through overseas direct shopping are surging. Among them, counterfeit products with unverified ingredients and distribution conditions have been discovered, requiring special caution.

Reporter Hong Yeongjae has the details.

[Reporter]

A parcel box delivered via international mail is opened to reveal the obesity treatment Mounjaro.

Another obesity treatment, a pill version of Wegovy, also appears.

Because Mounjaro and Wegovy brought in from abroad are harmful pharmaceuticals designated by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, any imports lacking the required import conditions are subject to customs crackdowns.

However, with prices in countries like Japan being less than half of those in South Korea, the number of crackdowns by August of this year has already exceeded four times the total number of crackdowns for the entire previous year.

Among traveler crackdowns, 63% originated from Japan, while 94% of mail crackdowns came from India.

[Lee Jin-hee, Director of Clearance Division, Korea Customs Service: In the case of Japan, you can think of people going there directly, purchasing them, and carrying them back. For India, most cases involve purchasing via social media and then bringing them in through international mail.]

Safety cannot be guaranteed.

This is a Mounjaro product that entered South Korea from India via international mail.

Both the packaging box and the syringe shape looked identical to the original, but an analysis of the ingredients revealed it to be a counterfeit.

There were nine delivery items investigated, and the content of tirzepatide, the main ingredient of Mounjaro, varied widely across products, with numerous unidentified impurities also detected.

While Mounjaro must be stored between 2°C (36°F) and 8°C (46°F) to maintain quality, it was confirmed that the counterfeit products had undergone no refrigerated transport process at all.

[Na Dong-hee, Professor, College of Pharmacy, Chung-Ang University: This can result not only in the degradation of the medicine's quality but also in increasing the risk of unexpected adverse reactions.]

The Korea Customs Service stated that it will strengthen X-ray screening targeting flights departing from Japan and expand customs clearance inspections tailored to the characteristics of each import route, such as overseas direct purchases.

(Photo: Yonhap News / Reported by Lee Moo-jin | Video Editing by Choi Jin-hwa | Design by Yang Gi-tae)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.