Korean Man Arrested for Labeling American Lobsters as Canadian
These are not the lobsters you are looking for……:
A South Korean importer has been arrested for selling American lobsters under a Canadian label for two and a half years, the South Regional Headquarters of the Korea Coast Guard said Tuesday.
The importer, identified only as 53-year-old Kim, is accused of importing 18 tons of American lobsters worth 2.13 billion won (US$1.9 million) in 321 shipments from September 2014 to March this year and selling them to local restaurants as more expensive Canadian products, the maritime police agency said.
Kim earned about 2.6 billion won from the alleged fraud, as American lobsters are about 20 percent cheaper than their Canadian counterparts in the local market, the agency added.
The agency noted that Kim replaced the origin labels of imported lobsters and fabricated the relevant documents to sell them as Canadian products to local restaurant owners. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link.
I’m not a seafood dude but don’t both the US and Canada get their lobsters from pretty much the same area? I guess maybe Canada’s getting a different grade of Lobster if they yank em from the Hudson Bay or off the coast of New Foundland.
Probably a case of either tariffs or branding being the cause for the increased price but in any case we know how it goes in Korea, doesn’t matter so much about if it’s actually higher quality but if the root price it higher it must be good and paraded in front of the neighbors to increase status!
Dum dum da dum dumm dada da daaa… Rock Lobster.