Rep. Jo Seung-rae Leads Bill to Prevent App Market Abuse

[Asia Economy Reporter Seulgina Jo] A bill prohibiting application market operators such as Google and Apple from forcing the use of only their own payment methods for in-app payments has been proposed in the National Assembly.

Seungrae Jo, a member of the National Assembly Science, Technology, Information and Broadcasting and Communications Committee and a representative of the Democratic Party of Korea (Daejeon Yuseong-gu Gap), announced on the 8th that he has officially proposed a partial amendment to the Telecommunications Business Act to establish measures to prevent the abuse of power such as forcing in-app payments by app market operators.

This measure comes in response to the controversy over so-called "app tolls," as Google has been pushing to apply the 30% commission fee, previously applied only to game apps, to all apps like Apple and to enforce in-app payments.

In the proposed amendment, Representative Jo included provisions to prohibit app market operators from engaging in typical abusive practices such as ▲forcing specific payment methods ▲unjustified delays or deletions in app reviews ▲obstructing registration on other app markets, and also stipulated user protection obligations of app market operators regarding payments and refunds.

Additionally, the bill enhances its effectiveness by granting the Korea Communications Commission the authority to inspect the fulfillment of obligations by app market operators, order submission of materials, and issue corrective orders.

Notably, this amendment is significant in that it includes specific provisions addressing unfair practices that app market operators have actually committed in the market, beyond the recent issue of in-app payments.

It is known that global app market operators have been criticized for abusing their market dominance by forcing exclusive releases of domestic mobile games such as ‘Lineage M’ on their app markets, or unilaterally deleting domestic webtoon apps like ‘Lezhin Comics’ on the grounds of providing adult content.

Representative Jo said, “It is necessary to organize the order so that the market dominance of global operators does not lead to increased burdens on domestic content developers and the public,” and added, “As the committee’s spokesperson, I will do my best to strengthen domestic content competitiveness and enhance consumer benefits.”

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