Korea Taps Samsung's Blockchain Tech to Fight Customs Fraud

South Korea's customs authority is looking to adopt Samsung's blockchain tech as the backbone of a decentralized customs clearance system.

Samsung SDS, the conglomerate's IT arm, said on Friday that the Korea Customs Service has inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) that will see Samsung's Nexledger blockchain utilized for the new platform.

Forty-eight domestic institutions, including public agencies and shipping and insurance companies, have also signed the MOU, says the firm, aiming to participate as nodes on the distributed network to bring more transparency to the customs process.

The effort seeks to share the necessary series of export documents from a number of entities, such as customs declarations and delivery forms, and is being designed to "fundamentally block document forgery," as well as make the export process more efficient.

Korea Customs Service started working with Samsung on the blockchain use case back in May, when it joined the tech giant's newly launched shipping and logistics consortium.

As CoinDesk reported in April, Samsung SDS had already started developing its blockchain platform for international shipments – one it expected to reduce costs in that sector by 20 percent.

The new customs initiative is also in line with the South Korean government's overall agenda for driving blockchain adoption in pubic services, having allocated dedicated government funding.

Currently, the Ministry of ICT is focusing on developing six pilot projects for public services, one of which is customs clearance.

South Korean port image via Shutterstock