Relevant legislation and statutory standards

The primary competition legislation in Korea is the Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Law (“FTL”), which was enacted in April 1980. The FTL contains various sections which regulate particular aspects of competitive behavior of companies. As major examples, the FTL regulates and covers, among others, the following areas of activity:

1. Monopolies, monopolisation and abuse of monopolistic power in general;

2. Unfair collaborative activity;

3. Business combination, including mergers and acquisitions; and

4. Unfair trade practices.

Decision-making bodies and enforcement authority(ies)

The main competition authority in Korea is the Korea Fair Trade Commission (“KFTC”), which is authorised under the FTL to oversee the enforcement of that legislation. Among other things, the KFTC is involved in formulating and administering competition policy in Korea. It also deliberates, decides and handles competition cases through its decision-making process.

The KFTC consists of a committee (the “Committee”), which is a decision-making body, and a secretariat (the “Secretariat”), which is an administering body. There are currently nine commissioners in the Committee, five of whom are government officials (including the Chairman, the Vice-Chairman of the KFTC and three standing commissioners) and four of whom are non-standing. The Secretariat performs activities such as investigating competition issues and enforcing decisions made by the Committee.

When a competition issue potentially violating the FTL is brought to the KFTC's attention either by complaints filed by a competitor, customer, consumers or any other person, or at its own initiative, officials of the KFTC, who are mainly responsible for fact-finding, perform their investigation and submit a report of their findings to the Committee.