JEONJU -- An appellate court on Friday upheld an earlier prison sentence of a face mask importer convicted for bringing over Chinese mask products and selling them as South Korean-made products during the height of the pandemic last year to make unfair profits.

The Jeonju District Court's appellate division sentenced the person, 49, to 18 months in prison for importing some 1.08 million units of face masks made in China and retailing some 11,000 of the items online after falsely labeling them as South Korean-made goods in August of last year.

The demand for protective face masks soared at the time as the country was gripped by the second wave of COVID-19, after cluster infections broke out following a mass anti-government rally held in central Seoul on the Liberation Day national holiday on Aug. 15.

The court also upheld the six-month suspended prison sentences for two accomplices, convicting them of violating the Foreign Trade Act.

"The nature of the defendants' crime is bad in that they took advantage of the mask shortage (during the pandemic)," the court said. (Yonhap)