Fair Trade Commission Chairman: "Platform Review Guidelines Include Illegal Practices Such as Self-Preferencing"

[Sejong=Asia Economy Reporter Kwon Haeyoung] Cho Sung-wook, Chairman of the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC), announced that the online platform review guidelines will specify major types of illegal activities in the platform sector, including self-preferencing.

According to the KFTC on the 14th, Chairman Cho attended the 20th Annual Conference of the International Competition Network (ICN) held from the 13th to the 15th, where he presented improvement measures for laws and systems in the online platform sector containing these details.

Chairman Cho formalized the push to establish online platform review guidelines, stating, "We aim to supplement the existing competition law enforcement standards, which were designed with traditional industries in mind, by preparing market definition criteria and dominance assessment standards that consider the characteristics of the online platform sector, such as two-sided markets and free services." He added, "The guidelines will also exemplify representative anti-competitive behaviors in the online platform sector, such as self-preferencing, multi-homing restrictions, and Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) clauses, to prevent legal violations by businesses."

Self-preferencing refers to a platform favoring its own products or content over those of other companies. Last October, the KFTC imposed fines on Naver for manipulating shopping and video search algorithms to ensure its own products and content appeared first in search results, constituting self-preferencing behavior.

Chairman Cho stated, "In the future, acts where large platforms abuse their dual role as both referee and player by favoring their own services while discriminating against competitors' services will remain a key focus of the KFTC's monitoring."

He also emphasized the necessity of promoting the enactment of the Online Platform Fairness Act and amendments to the Electronic Commerce Act, which will respectively regulate issues between platforms and tenant businesses, and between platforms and consumers.

Chairman Cho said, "The KFTC is not only regulating unilateral acts by market-dominant businesses but is also addressing unilateral conduct regulations that do not presuppose market dominance, such as abuse of bargaining position and unfair competitive practices." He explained, "This means that even if a platform operator does not hold a dominant market position, it can still be regulated if it uses a superior position to cause negative effects in the market." He continued, "There is a growing trend of raising issues regarding platforms forcing unfair contracts on tenant businesses, shifting various costs onto them, and improperly using tenant data." He emphasized, "We are strengthening investigations and corrective measures against platform operators who abuse their superior position over small and medium-sized tenant businesses."

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