Over the past seven years, the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) has fined big Korean companies more than 4 trillion won for violating the Fair Trade Act and other laws.
Among them, the KFTC imposed the largest amount of fines (265.5 billion won for nine cases) on Hyundai Motor Company. The amount of fines slapped on the top 10 companies stood at 885.9 billion won (US$654.7 million), accounting 30 percent of the total.
The KFTC imposed 4.1950 trillion won in fines on 53 large companies for violations of the Fair Trade Act, the Fair Package and Labeling Act, the Door-to-Door Sales Act, the E-Commerce Act, the Subcontracting Act, the Franchise Business Act, the Large-scale Distribution Business Act, and the Fair Agency Transaction Act from 2017 to August 2023, according to data the KFTC submitted to Democratic Party lawmaker Min Byung-duk on Oct. 20.
During the period, the KFTC imposed 3.8575 trillion won in fines on large companies for violations of the Fair Trade Act, accounting for the highest percentage. This accounted for 92 percent of the total amount of fines (4.195 trillion won).
The fines on large companies for violations of the Fair Trade Act were followed by fines of 140 billion won for Subcontracting Act violations, 103.3 billion won for Fair Package and Labeling Act violations, 79.1 billion won for Large-scale Distribution Business Act violations, 9.8 billion won for Franchise Business Act violations, 2.8 billion won for Fair Agency Transaction Act violations, 1.7 billion won for Door-to-Door Sales Act violations, and 1.5 billion won for E-Commerce Act violations.
Meanwhile, among the top 10 companies in the highest fine standings, Hyundai Motor topped the list with 265.5 billion won for nine cases.
Hyundai Motor was followed by Samsung with 241.6 billion won (13 cases), Dongkuk Steel with 77.2 billion won (5 cases), Harim with 75.4 billion won (17 cases), Hoban Construction with 64.8 billion won (14 cases), Lotte with 48.2 billion won (12 cases), Korea HC with 44.7 billion won (7 cases), GS with 37.7 billion won (14 cases), Sinokor Merchant Marine with 36.4 billion won (3 cases) and LS with 28.6 billion won (23 cases).