A court ruled that travel agencies must refund consumers who bought travel and lodging products on Tmon and WEMAKEPRICE INC. but failed to get their payments back due to a settlement failure. Claims against the electronic payment gateway (PG) companies were not accepted.
The Civil Agreement Division 29 of the Seoul Central District Court (Presiding Judge Go Seung-il) ruled partially in favor of 598 victims of the T-MEP incident in their payment refund suit against travel agencies, including Yellow Balloon Tour, and PG companies.
The court ordered 592 plaintiffs to be paid the amounts they claimed against the travel agencies. However, it dismissed all of their claims against the PG companies.
The remaining six plaintiffs were not recognized as parties to the contracts with the travel agencies, so their claims were not accepted.
Regarding the claims against the PG companies, the court explained, "We determined that the legal grounds asserted by the plaintiffs do not apply." Consumers argued that the PG companies should share responsibility with the travel agencies to refund the payments, but the court did not accept that.
This ruling is the first trial judgment among five joint lawsuits filed by more than 3,000 victims of T-MEP travel and lodging payment issues with support from the Korea Consumer Agency (KCA). The victims who received the ruling on the day fall into the joint lawsuit's "Group 2."
The victims argued that because T-MEP, which sold the products, lost the ability to issue refunds, the sellers that were to actually provide the travel and lodging services and the PG companies that handled the payments should jointly refund the payments.
The Consumer Dispute Mediation Committee of the Korea Consumer Agency (KCA) decided on Dec. 2024 that sellers should jointly refund up to 90% of the payment and PG companies up to 30%. However, only some simple payment companies and about 40 companies with small refund amounts accepted the mediation plan, leading victims who were not compensated to file lawsuits.
Accordingly, 3,293 consumers filed lawsuits last year against 53 sellers and 13 PG companies seeking the return of about 7.72 billion won in total. Some victims later withdrew after receiving refunds through measures such as canceling credit card installment payments.