Suspicious international parcels rattle nation, puzzle authorities

Korea's customs authorities are postponing the delivery of certain international parcels after suspicious packages postmarked largely from Taiwan set off alarm alerts across the country over the weekend...

Police officers and military officials are investigating unidentified international packages that have arrived at a postal office in Gangneung, Gangwon, on Sunday. The office received 11 questionable parcels from Taiwan over the weekend. [YONHAP]

Korea's customs authorities are postponing the delivery of certain international parcels after suspicious packages postmarked largely from Taiwan set off alarm alerts across the country over the weekend.

“There are cases in which international sellers randomly send their products, or even empty packages pretending to hold products, to unspecified addresses in Korea for the purpose of inflating their export records as part of a scam,” said the Korea Customs Service in a statement on Sunday.

“Considering that the recent unidentified international packages were sent to Korea in a similar format, we are trying to identify if this was indeed intended as a scam.”

Nearly 2,000 people in Korea reported receiving unidentified international packages last week.

Of these, 1,300 cases proved false alarms. Police were investigating 500 of the parcels as of Sunday.

The flurry of reports came after three people at a welfare center for people with disabilities in Ulsan received unidentified international packages on Thursday.

They were treated at hospitals after they reported symptoms of dizziness and shortness of breath after opening the parcels.

However, the Agency for Defense Development found that the parcels contained no hazardous materials.

On Friday, the Korea Post headquarters in Myeong-dong, central Seoul, had to evacuate 1,700 people after a package containing an unknown substance was found. The package was reportedly being investigated by military authorities.

A resident in Cheonan, South Chungcheong, on Sunday reported an unidentified international package that was initially suspected by the police to be containing a gaseous substance. The package was confirmed later, however, to have no dangerous substances inside.

Similar packages appeared in Seoul, Daejeon, Yongin in Gyeonggi, Haman in South Gyeongsang and Jeju.

All of the packages had a Chunghwa Post sticker on yellow or black wrapping.

Many packages were addressed from P.O. Box 100561-1003777, Taipei Taiwan. Some of the packages were also addressed from Malaysia, Ukraine or Uzbekistan.

Some packages reportedly contained an odorless dough-like material or an object shaped like a cosmetics product.

The post office warned against opening suspicious packages from overseas if receivers haven't recently placed an order from abroad, and especially packages that were double-wrapped.

In 2020, a similar incident happened in the United States, Canada and Japan, where the sender was addressed from P.O. Box 100561-1003777, Taipei Taiwan.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture concluded it was a brushing scam, a malicious e-commerce technique that delivers packages to falsely boost a site's number of orders.

Taiwanese customs authorities and police vowed to get to the bottom of the mysterious packages over the weekend.

Cheng Wen-tsan, vice premier of Taiwan, said some of the parcels in question came from Shenzhen, China, according to local Taiwanese media outlet Central News Agency’s report on Saturday.

The parcels were only making a transfer in Taiwan, he was quoted to have said by the media outlet.

The Customs Administration of the Ministry of Finance of Taiwan said on Saturday that it formed a special inter-ministerial team to investigate the matter.

BY ESTHER CHUNG [chung.juhee@joongang.co.kr]