Our never-ceasing endeavor of enlightening the sneaker community on instances of leather and rubber lunacy takes us all the way to South Korea. In this East Asian country of approximately 51 million, a man from China fooled a lot of people into thinking they were purchasing authentic sneakers.
The Seoul Central District Court announced on March 1 that it convicted a 36-year-old man, surnamed Kim, of selling approximately 8,000 pairs of counterfeit shoes – 7,300 Nike and 670 Converse- between May 2017 and April 2018. Over the course of selling the knock-offs he made about 744 million won ($660,000).
In addition to the four year sentence Kim received, he also had to repay the ill-gotten funds in restitution.
The judges, in rejecting Kim’s claims that the victims were aware of the nature of the shoes, said a heavy sentence was necessary because the man had denied his crimes, and that these crimes were deleterious to many consumers and the reputations of the brands themselves.
