Korea provisional anti-dumping duty (11.92–19.43%) on Thai fibreboard; 5-year definitive duty (15.29–22.44%) recommended to Ministry of Economy and Finance

Mechanism

Korea's anti-dumping process is bifurcated, as in other recent KTC cases (e.g. 2026-03-30-korea-moef-seamless-copper-tube-thailand-ad-provisional): the Korea Trade Commission (KTC), under the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, investigates dumping margins and injury and makes a recommendation; the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MOEF) then operationalises the duty by official notice (고시).

Timeline:

• March 2025 — Korean fibreboard producer Unid BT Plus petitions the

KTC, alleging injury from dumped Thai fibreboard imports.

• ~May 2025 — investigation formally initiated (Global Trade Alert logs

the state act's announced date as 7 May 2025; not independently confirmed against a primary KTC record).

• 28 November 2025 — MOEF imposes a provisional anti-dumping duty of

11.92–19.43% on Thai fibreboard.

• 12 February 2026 — the KTC's 469th commission meeting issues its

final determination (dumping confirmed, material injury found) and resolves to recommend a 5-year definitive duty of 15.29–22.44% to the Minister of Economy and Finance. As of this filing, MOEF had not yet gazetted the definitive rate — the provisional 11.92–19.43% schedule remains the only legally binding rate. See Open questions.

Product scope — fibreboard (섬유판): panels ≤5mm thick made by separating/extracting fibre from wood or other ligneous material and binding it with adhesive; used in furniture, interior building fit-out, small fittings, and packaging.

The same 469th KTC meeting also recommended AD duties on Saudi-origin butyl glycol ether (43.58%) and a provisional AD duty on Chinese butyl acrylate (9.53–19.17%) — unrelated products, filed separately if in scope. Korean trade press also references a related, separate KTC case against Thai particleboard (13.03–15.18% AD duty decided around September 2025) — not yet in this register and not the subject of this filing.

Why severity 2

• Mid-single-digit-to-low-20s ad-valorem range (11.92–22.44% across the

provisional and recommended-definitive schedules) is meaningful but not prohibitive for a narrow, low-value wood-panel product line.

• Single exporting country (Thailand), single product category — no

systemic supply-chain or critical-material dimension.

• Comparable to other recently filed narrow trade-remedy duties in this

band (e.g. South Africa ITAC's 28.86% duty on Mozambican steel tubes, also severity 2).

Downstream implications

• Unid BT Plus and Korean fibreboard producers gain price-floor relief

on Thai fibreboard imports for the duration of the provisional (and, pending MOEF gazette, definitive) duty.

• Thai fibreboard exporters face a material but not prohibitive cost

disadvantage in the Korean market.

• Pattern — this is at least the second Korean KTC anti-dumping

action against Thai wood-panel products within roughly a year (alongside the September 2025 Thai particleboard case referenced in Korean trade press), suggesting a broader Korean trade-defence push in the wood-panel product category, distinct from the concurrent Korean steel/copper AD caseload against China and Southeast Asian transshipment.

Open questions

• Whether and when MOEF gazettes the 12 February 2026 KTC recommendation

(15.29–22.44%, 5-year term) — file as an amendment once the MOEF notice number and date are confirmed.

• Exact per-company rate breakdown (the sources found report only the

aggregate provisional and recommended-definitive ranges, not a company-by-company table as in the parallel copper-tube case).

• Whether the Thai particleboard case (13.03–15.18%, ~September 2025)

should be filed as a separate, related register action.