Danggeun Market CEO Kim Jae-hyun poses with the company's mascot at his office in Gangnam, Seoul, in this 2019 file photo. / Korea times file

By Kim Jae-heun

Danggeun Market, the country's largest online flea market platform, reported 1,620 customer-on-customer disputes last year, according to independent lawmaker Yang Jung-suk Monday.

As more people trade secondhand items online, conflicts between individual sellers and buyers have been increasing.

"Last year, I bought a used tablet PC on Danggeun Market and it broke only a month later. I tried to find the seller but he was gone. People use false names here and that makes it harder for us to find the swindlers later," a 32-year-old office worker surnamed Kim said.

Unlike open market services operated by e-commerce firms ― where the companies take responsibility for any defective products they sell ― it is difficult to hold individuals responsible on Danggeun Market.

Danggeun Market users are left to fix their own problems in customer-to-customer (C2C) trading. For the protection of customers' personal information, Danggeun Market cannot look into their conversations shared on the platform. It can only impose trading sanctions on a user after receiving a complaint. There is no regulation that forces the online flea market platform to intervene in individuals' disputes as well.

When customers cannot resolve an issue, they have to either report the case to the police or the E-commerce Mediation Committee operated by the Korea Internet & Security Agency.

Last year, 37.5 percent of the cases filed to the committee failed to be resolved. Customers in this situation then have to file civil suits against each other, but because most of the items traded on Danggeun Market are cheap, no one is willing to spend much time or money to take legal action.

The government and the National Assembly agreed that consumers need to be protected on the online flea market, but highlighted the limits to imposing sanctions on individuals.

The Fair Trade Commission considered revising the Electronic Commerce Law to reveal sellers' names, addresses and phone numbers when they are reported for fraud, but the idea was scrapped after receiving backlash from politicians and firms in the industry.