An unauthorized dental equipment (Image courtesy of the Korea Customs Service)
SEJONG, Nov. 7 (Korea Bizwire) – The Seoul Main Customs Office announced on November 6 that it had caught 13 dentists who smuggled 11,349 pieces of unauthorized dental equipment (worth approximately 140 million won) into South Korea and used them on patients.
The dentists are accused of making 1,184 separate purchases of dental equipment through AliExpress between December 2022 and April of this year. They allegedly disguised the medical equipment as personal-use items to evade import requirements and customs duties.
While medical device imports valued under $150 can be exempt from formal procedures in certain cases such as personal medical use, professional medical equipment generally requires import approval from the Food and Drug Safety Administration and must undergo formal customs clearance procedures rather than simplified list-based clearance.
Despite being aware of these requirements, the dentists chose to purchase equipment through foreign online marketplaces to reduce costs. They also shared information about direct overseas purchases of medical equipment in group chat rooms, investigators found.
The smuggled items included dental drills used for cavity treatment and tooth cutting, as well as oral anesthetic syringes that come into direct contact with patients’ gums.
“To protect public health, we will strengthen customs management of direct overseas purchases to prevent unauthorized and unapproved medical devices and other potentially harmful items from entering the country,” said a Seoul Main Customs Office official.
“We will continue monitoring domestic distribution of such items.”
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
