Government Complex Sejong, Building 5, home to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. (Photo by Yoo Dae-gil)
South Korea’s Animal and Plant Quarantine Agency said Tuesday it has booked 16 people on suspicion of illegally importing large quantities of banned Chinese apple seedlings and other plant materials, in violation of the Plant Protection Act.
The agency said it launched a planned investigation ahead of the spring season, when demand for seedlings typically rises. Investigators said the suspects — including seedling producers, importers, brokers and logistics operators — allegedly split roles and carried out repeated illegal imports. They also allegedly dispersed payments across multiple bank accounts to evade financial tracking.
Seized items included about 630,000 Chinese apple seedlings and 138,000 peach seedlings, as well as 1,161 kilograms of peach seeds and 18 kilograms of fruit and vegetable seeds from Southeast Asia and Europe. The agency said the goods, worth tens of billions of won if sold domestically, were imported without quarantine procedures.
The 630,000 apple seedlings alone could plant an orchard of about 4.13 million square meters (about 1.25 million pyeong), roughly 1.4 times the area of Yeouido, the agency said. It called the case unusually large for a single seedling-smuggling incident and said domestic distribution could have severely affected the broader fruit industry.
The agency noted that fire blight previously entered South Korea through illegally imported fruit seedlings, and that since 2015 the country has paid about 254 billion won in compensation and related costs.
The agency said it urgently seized illegally imported seedlings being stored by producers in March, before they could be distributed, and destroyed all of them by incineration. It said the investigation will be expanded to identify additional people involved beyond those already booked.
The agency said it launched a planned investigation ahead of the spring season, when demand for seedlings typically rises. Investigators said the suspects — including seedling producers, importers, brokers and logistics operators — allegedly split roles and carried out repeated illegal imports. They also allegedly dispersed payments across multiple bank accounts to evade financial tracking.
Seized items included about 630,000 Chinese apple seedlings and 138,000 peach seedlings, as well as 1,161 kilograms of peach seeds and 18 kilograms of fruit and vegetable seeds from Southeast Asia and Europe. The agency said the goods, worth tens of billions of won if sold domestically, were imported without quarantine procedures.
The 630,000 apple seedlings alone could plant an orchard of about 4.13 million square meters (about 1.25 million pyeong), roughly 1.4 times the area of Yeouido, the agency said. It called the case unusually large for a single seedling-smuggling incident and said domestic distribution could have severely affected the broader fruit industry.
The agency noted that fire blight previously entered South Korea through illegally imported fruit seedlings, and that since 2015 the country has paid about 254 billion won in compensation and related costs.
The agency said it urgently seized illegally imported seedlings being stored by producers in March, before they could be distributed, and destroyed all of them by incineration. It said the investigation will be expanded to identify additional people involved beyond those already booked.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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