Joseonguk Fair Trade Commission Chairman: "Grant Additional Points in Fair Trade Agreement When Supporting Partners Facing COVID-19 Difficulties"

Jongwook Cho, Chairman of the Fair Trade Commission. (File photo) [Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Joo Sang-don] Cho Sung-wook, Chairman of the Korea Fair Trade Commission, reiterated on the 13th that "companies supporting partner firms struggling due to the COVID-19 pandemic will be given additional points in the Fair Trade Agreement evaluation to strengthen the foundation for win-win cooperation."

On this day, Chairman Cho visited Naver located in Bundang, Gyeonggi Province, and made these remarks while listening to Naver's consumer rights protection and win-win cooperation activities related to COVID-19. Earlier, on the 24th of last month, Chairman Cho visited Yuyang D&U, a partner company of LG Electronics located in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, and stated, "Companies supporting partner firms will receive additional points during the Fair Trade Agreement evaluation."

First, Chairman Cho highly evaluated Naver's efforts to prevent consumer damage and its win-win cooperation activities initiated in response to the COVID-19 situation. Naver has strengthened self-regulation by monitoring and issuing warnings against unilateral order cancellations by vendors selling items such as masks. Additionally, Naver provides real-time mask sales status by pharmacy through the Naver app and map, and offers government mask data via Naver Cloud in an open API format for anyone to use.

In particular, to reduce the burden on small and medium-sized enterprises, Naver reduced server usage fees by 50% for about 13,000 SMEs using its cloud platform during March and April. It has also waived payment fees for some vendors facing significant operational difficulties and urgently supported small business owners with 20,000 masks as part of its win-win cooperation efforts.

The Fair Trade Commission is also strictly responding to unfair practices amid the COVID-19 crisis. Since the end of February, it has focused inspections on 17 companies, including seven open markets, two home shopping companies, and four large marts, targeting promotional activities exploiting mask supply instability such as bundling masks with other products and offering gifts. As a result, all 17 companies have been ordered to stop bundling practices targeting their vendors. Furthermore, on-site investigations of online sellers uncovered numerous cases of unilateral order cancellations despite having mask stock, and the Commission is also addressing unfair advertisements for air purifiers and humidifiers that lure consumers with unverified COVID-19 prevention effects.

Chairman Cho said, "I hope Naver's activities to prevent consumer damage and promote win-win cooperation will spread to other companies," and added, "The Fair Trade Commission will do its best to minimize consumer damage caused by corporate difficulties due to reduced consumption and various unfair practices."

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