[New Year's Message] Seongwook Cho, Chairman of the Fair Trade Commission, "We Will Resolve Unfair Practices in New Industry Monopolies to Promote Innovative Competition"

Cho Sung-wook, Chairman of the Korea Fair Trade Commission. (File photo)

[Sejong=Asia Economy Reporter Joo Sang-don] Cho Sung-wook, Chairman of the Fair Trade Commission (FTC), stated on the 2nd, "It is necessary to alleviate concerns about unfair practices by monopolistic and dominant businesses and to promote innovative competition in new industry sectors."

On this day, Chairman Cho said in his New Year's address, "This year's policy direction of the FTC should focus on strengthening innovation momentum through promoting competition and regulatory improvement under the continuous reinforcement of an inclusive foundation."

Chairman Cho diagnosed this year as "a very important time to spread the principles of competition across all sectors of the economy, improve the economic structure, and invigorate the market," and promised, "We will realize concrete results that the public can feel in their daily lives."

He prioritized "the continuous promotion of fair economy policies and the spread of the values of a fair economy" as the main direction for the FTC's work this year. Chairman Cho said, "We will steadily implement measures to improve transaction practices between large and small-medium enterprises and to expand win-win cooperation so that ordinary people can tangibly feel the results of a fair economy," adding, "Regardless of the size of the company, we will strictly sanction unfair internal transactions."

He also emphasized the intention to correct monopolistic abuses in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector. Chairman Cho stated, "We will identify and improve competition-restricting regulations that solidify monopolistic market structures," and "We will pursue merger and acquisition (M&A) policies that consider the dynamic nature of new industry sectors while not harming consumer welfare." Industry insiders interpret this as a remark targeting Yogiyo and Baedal Minjok, which recently submitted corporate merger notifications to the FTC. Baemin's market share is 55.7%, Yogiyo's is 33.5%, and their combined share is 89.2%, effectively a monopoly. The FTC's principle is to prohibit all mergers that restrict competition. Chairman Cho reiterated in his New Year's address the emphasis on "not harming consumer welfare."

Along with this, the FTC plans to focus on monitoring legal violations in digital transaction environments such as Over-The-Top (OTT) services, platforms, and Social Networking Services (SNS) this year, while proactively improving systems to prevent consumer damage. Additionally, to foster a voluntary fair trade culture, the FTC will activate programs such as the Compliance Program (CP) and Consumer-Centered Management (CCM) system to promote companies' voluntary compliance with laws and consumer-centered management culture, and aim to spread a culture of voluntary dispute resolution.

He urged employees to communicate with the market. Chairman Cho said, "Only by communicating interactively with various policy customers such as the market, consumers, and academia, and by becoming an FTC that innovates itself, can the organization's trust be enhanced and we ourselves take a step forward," adding, "Only when we work together with the collective intelligence of the people can our FTC move forward steadily without wavering."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.