Volkswagen faces lawsuits and penalties

The Korean government will take disciplinary action against Volkswagen after completing test on its four car models` exhaust emissions in early November. Two years are needed for Korea and the EU to jointly introduce exhaust emissions management system for small diesel cars (less than 3.5 tons) but the device manipulation in question is subject to verification and punishment with current regulations.

The regulation, Article 8 Clause 2, which regulates automobiles and parts as subject to the Korea-EU free trade agreement annex, stipulates that administrative authorities in charge can do a random sampling for verification according to the country`s law to see whether the manufacturer observes technology regulations. Based on this law, the Environment Ministry has put a seal on imported Volkswagen models of Golf, Jetta, Beetle and Audi A3 at Pyeongtaek Port and is preparing for the test.

The key purpose of the test is to see whether cars exported to Korea used a "defeat device," a device to defeat the emissions control.

The problem is that punishment level in Korea is significantly lower than in U.S. and other countries. Even if it is found that the cars were manufactured and sold differently from as certified, penalty ceiling is set at 1 billion won (837,520 U.S. dollars) per car. This is in sharp contrast to the fact that Volkswagen is subject to pay a maximum of 18 billion dollars and 480,000 recall orders in the U.S.

"Due to the limitations of the current law, disciplinary actions won`t be effective and large companies will only benefit," said Kim Jeong-soo, head of National Institute under the Environmental Research`s Transportation Pollution Research Center.

Critics say the Volkswagen case should serve as a momentum for strengthening supervision on domestic and foreign car makers. The Environment Ministry started its first examination of the state of environment certificate management for imported cars at the end of 2013. Prior to that, it had promoted occasional tests of simple exhaust emissions. Another problem is that the center lacks manpower as it has just 18 employees to examine the state of environment certificate management.