Temu fined 357 million won in South Korea for deceptive promotions？！！！

South Korea's antitrust regulator said on Wednesday it had fined Temu for misleading South Korean consumers through deceptive promotions, according to the JoongAng Daily.

This is the first time the agency has imposed regulatory penalties on the Chinese e-commerce platform.

South Korea's Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said it had fined Temu 357 million won (about $260,000) for violating the Fair Advertising Management Act and ordered it to take corrective measures.

The regulator said the platform advertised that users could easily get cash-equivalent bonus points by simply clicking on a roulette-style game. However, in reality, users needed to meet some complex conditions, such as inviting multiple contacts, to receive the rewards.

Temu held a Nintendo Switch launch event through YouTube from May to July 2024, and wrote advertising slogans such as "999 won, first come, first served" and "Win now", creating false advertising that made people mistakenly believe that the number of prizes prepared was large and the chances of winning were high.
However, the real purpose of the event was to get a Nintendo console for 999 won per person on a first-come, first-served basis on a designated release date.

From August 2023 to March last year, Temu advertised on its official website that it would provide 150,000 won worth of coupons to customers who installed the mobile app for the first time, and displayed the remaining time in seconds. In fact, users could get the coupons even if they did not install the app within the remaining time.
In addition, Temu created advertisements that allowed consumers to get products for free, making it difficult for consumers to understand the terms of compensation. Consumers had to recommend and install the Temu app to their friends to receive compensation, and had to fill in the required number of referrals, which could only be understood by clicking on the "Rules" bar displayed above the small screen at the top of the screen.

The Fair Trade Commission determined that Temu's actions interfered with consumers' rational decision-making and its advertisements could deceive consumers or make them aware of false information.
"Consumers usually decide whether to participate in such promotions based on the initial advertising information," an FTC official said, "but in Temu's case, they needed to invest a lot of time and effort to discover the actual requirements."

Separately, the FTC also fined Temu 1 million won for violating the Business Act, which requires platform operators to clearly display their corporate identity information and terms of service on the homepage of their websites.