Published · 2d agoInvest3 min read
Korea's grey channel for weight-loss drugs now dwarfs the licensed one by case count, and a foreign web price that domestic prescriptions cannot match is doing the work.
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The ratio buried in the customs numbers is wider than the raw case counts get credit for. Cumulative seizures against cumulative licensed clearances is close to nine to one [1]. Take only the first half of this year and it is about eleven to one [2]. The licensed route is not collapsing, though: its 391 shipments in six months annualise to roughly 782, about four times the 191 logged for all of last year [3]. Both channels are growing. The unofficial one is compounding faster, at a first-half run rate of around 8,310 cases, seven times the 2025 figure [4].
The two sides of that ratio are not the same unit, and the difference cuts against the alarm. Customs is counting intercepted attempts on one side and consignments cleared by importers on the other. A licensed importer's shipment is wholesale volume; a seized international parcel is one person's month or two. Nine to one describes how many buyers are trying, not how many doses actually cross.
On price, sedaily puts a month's supply at about 150,000 won on foreign websites, with some listings at 70,000 to 100,000 won [5][6]. The cheap end sits 33 to 53 percent below the typical foreign figure [5], so buyers are not shopping against a single overseas price but against a spread. The domestic comparison in the report is the loose part: 150,000 won is described as, in some cases, more than half the price of a domestic prescription, which reads as a saving of more than half rather than a price above half [5]. Either reading leaves the gap large enough to move volume.
Everything caught at clearance is held and destroyed in full, with no partial quantity to fall back on [11], and the customs service treats unauthorised import as a Customs Act offence [12]. Each parcel is therefore a wager where the downside is the entire purchase. Cases multiplied anyway [1], which is a revealed estimate of the odds: buyers are acting as though the chance of interception, times the price paid, is still smaller than the domestic bill. The number that would test that belief is not in this dataset. Customs publishes catches, not attempts, so the pass-through rate is unknown to the agency and to the buyers alike.
Classification is what turns the price gap into a crime statistic. Ordinary medicines get a personal allowance of six bottles or a three-month supply [9]; these two get nothing at any quantity without a recommendation letter exempting them from import requirement verification [10]. There is no legal version of paying the foreign price, so the border absorbs the difference one mailbag at a time.
Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.
The Korea Customs Service said it caught 4,155 illegal imports of weight-loss drugs, including Mounjaro and Wegovy, in the first six months of this year, 3.5 times the 1,189 cases recorded for all of last year.
Illegal import cases were four in 2024 and 1,189 last year, and topped 4,000 in the first half of this year; cumulative cases from 2024 through the first half of this year totalled 5,348.
Only 596 shipments cleared customs through licensed importers over the same period: 14 cases in 2024, 191 last year and 391 in the first half of this year.
Cases caught in international mail rose from two in 2024 to 1,046 last year and 3,489 in the first half of this year, accounting for 84.8% of all cumulative cases.
A month's supply of Wegovy or Mounjaro can be bought on foreign websites for about 150,000 won, described as in some cases more than half the price of buying with a domestic prescription.
On some foreign websites, a month's supply has reportedly been purchased for 70,000 to 100,000 won.
The reporting this story was synthesized from, earliest first. Every link goes to the original.
Cited in this coverage: Korea Customs Service, via en.sedaily.com
Cited in this coverage: en.sedaily.com
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