[ZoF]

It's in the article, the revoked approvals were not for 'fake' certificates, they were for valid certs from Chinese Bay Area Compliance Laboratories(BACL) offices.

It's unclear the cause of this, one might infer it was US pressure to adhere to the agreement after finding non-compliance, alternatively it could be internally originated investigation.

[exporectomy]

The reports were claimed to be from the US office but the the testing was done in China. So they were a kind of fake.

[chmod775]

> So they were a kind of fake.

They were not. Not even "kind of". For them to be fake they'd need to be made out as something they are not[1]. The companies who acquired those certificates just weren't aware that certificates from that particular branch weren't permissible under SK rules - likely not even authorities in SK were aware until they had a closer look.

As an analogy, a driver's license from one country may not allow you to drive a car in another, but that doesn't mean it's a fake license.

[1] Edit: Some outlets claim there were fabricated test records, if that is true and not just journalists writing whatever, then they would be indeed fake.

[ratsmack]

There's a big difference between fake and non-compliance with a specific countries laws.

[1ris]

A certificate like this is a lot about trust. If the very first thing that it states, where the test have been conducted, you can't trust the rest, i.e. if the tests have been performed at all, or within the specification.

[shkkmo]

Is there? The only fundemental difference is intent. The KCC said they did not make a determination of intent because it is irrelevant to the law that is being applied.

[antonzabirko]

You realize that the Chinese ones are going to be much less stringent? Meaning that claiming it's to the level of the US reqs is misleading and basically faking the cert.

[hmry]

> the Chinese ones are going to be much less stringent

Hmm, what makes you think that? I didn't see any indication in the article that the Chinese branch was not testing to the standards of US certification.

[extropy]

Not even that, the certs where from California offices, just that the testing work was carried out in a China branch office.

IMO this is a somewhat grey area. Not familiar with regulations around testing labs, but om the surface looks like an innocent cost optimization that someone decided to put some pressure on.