Ki-Jeong Han, Chairman of the Fair Trade Commission. random news
With the Kakao incident as an opportunity, the Fair Trade Commission drew up a knife to strengthen the crackdown on monopoly effects on online platforms.
This is because the neglect of social responsibility of the online platform exposed in the Kakao incident is deemed to be due to the loose competition structure.
The measures to ensure the basis for fair competition in the online platform market announced by the Fair Trade Commission on the 21st which Fair Trade Commission Chairman Han Ki-jung reported to President Yoon Seok-yeol have aimed at refining standards for violations due to platform monopoly and preventing easy M&A in the platform area. .
It is based on the analysis that the regulatory standards are still incomplete because it is a new industrial type, and the M&A standards are also loose and can be too big, making them vulnerable to events like this one .
The Fair Trade Commission also believes that the absence of such regulations has had a significant impact on the background that Kakao was able to increase the number of affiliated companies to 138 in February, including so-called tin can companies that the red or have no associated companies. sales performance.
In a call with CBS Nocut News, an official from the Fair Trade Commission said, “I think it may not have fulfilled its necessary social obligations because the competitive pressure disappeared because it formed a monopoly and excluded competitors from there.” “If competitive pressure Monopolies will also fulfill their social responsibilities similar to some competitors, so let’s promote competition,” he said.
As far as the direction is set, the remaining task is how quickly industry and expert opinion can be gathered and backed up to deliver results.
As the Fair Trade Commission suspends the establishment of guidelines for reviewing the monopoly of online platforms under the Yoon Seok-yeol administration, it is analyzed that it will focus on speed and completeness.
Initially, the Fair Trading Commission gave administrative notice in January of the enactment of the Platform Monopoly Examination Guidelines (Rules), a so-called commentary on the Fair Trading Act in the area of platforms, setting out the standards for judging a platform’s monopoly status . and types of prohibited acts.
As it was promoted during the Moon Jae-in administration, which focused on relatively strengthening related regulations, when the Yoon Seok-yeol administration, which focused on a more market-oriented approach, took office , the establishment of the by-laws was postponed one after another for reasons such as gathering the opinions of the industry and supplementary work.
In such a situation, when the Kakao incident began, the government and the ruling party had no choice but to feel a lot of pressure, and the possibility of significant acceleration exists.
The voices of related ministries, such as the Korea Communications Commission, which have put the brakes on the Fair Trade Commission’s move by claiming that related policies are the work area of the telecommunications authorities, are also likely to fade because online platforms are the target.
The FTC official said, “The antitrust review guidelines will be established by the end of the year and will be implemented from the beginning of next year. By strengthening the service providers voluntarily, we expect that the overall quality of the service will be improve and equity will increase.”
