Final Recommendation Report Released
The Special Committee for Amendment of the Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act put forward its final report on July 29. The Fair Trade Commission will finalize its revision bill based on the committee’s recommendations.
The FTC has already been collecting opinions from all walks of life on revising the act, apart from the special committee. A senior official from the FTC said, “We will refer to the committee’s final report in writing the chapters on competition and procedures, but the chapter on large business groups will differ a bit from the committee’s report.”
The competition-related chapter is about regulating unfair trading practices based on abuse of monopoly power, while the chapter on large business groups is about defining and regulating family-controlled business conglomerates, which are called chaebol in Korea. The procedure-related chapter defines administrative procedures, including investigations and corrective measures implemented in the process of enforcing the law.
The special committee divided it into three subcommittees, with each of them focusing on one of the three chapters of the law.
A senior official from the FTC drew attention by saying that the fair trade law should not be used to regulate business groups like Samsung and SK, which are unique to Korea.
The special committee recommended a flexible approach to regulating competition-restricting activities to make it possible to regulate new types of activities that are not specified in the law. It also recommended that punishments be reduced and fines be increased instead.