Korea Post’s Domestic Priority Mail Service May End

Ten years after its introduction in 1994, the Korea Post’s domestic priority mail service, which offers expedited letter delivery, may be abolished.

The Korea Post announced on December 12 that it has come up with a postal service act enforcement regulations revision that contains the abolition of domestic priority mail service and that it is discussing it with relevant departments.

The priority mail service may be abolished because it takes a long time to sort ordinary mail from priority mail by hand, and because the quality of domestic letter service has been lowered as the cost has increased.

The Korea Post also explained that as more and more people use cell phones and the Internet, less and less people are using priority mail.

Only 220 million of the 4.9 billion pieces of mail sent last year, 4.5%, were sent via priority mail service.

As a result, the Korea Post has decided to improve the delivery standard of ordinary mail from four days to two or three days, and incorporate priority mail service into overnight express mail service.

However, some point out that there might be problems with incorporating priority mail with overnight express mail because price of overnight express mail (2,810 won up to 25g) is 10 times higher than that of priority mail (310 won).

Sang-Rok Lee myzodan@donga.com