"Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, Submit Statement on Shipping Collusion"... Fair Trade Commission Actively Pursues Related Rule Revisions

Administrative Notice on the Amendment of the "Rules on Fair Trade Commission Meeting Operations and Case Procedures"

[Sejong=Asia Economy Reporter Joo Sang-don] Going forward, related ministries and agencies will be able to officially submit their opinions on cases before the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) holds a plenary meeting. The first case is expected to be the "shipping freight rate cartel" case, which is scheduled for a plenary meeting.

The FTC announced that it has prepared a revision of the "Rules on the Operation of the Fair Trade Commission Meetings and Case Procedures," which includes this content, and will conduct an administrative notice for 21 days from the 17th to December 7.

Currently, there is a regulatory basis for related administrative agencies designated as reference parties to participate in FTC deliberations and state their opinions. However, there is no regulation allowing state agencies to submit written opinions without the party's application or the commission's designation.

Accordingly, a regulatory basis has been established allowing state agencies and local governments to submit written opinions without the business operator's application or the FTC's request if they have policy opinions that should be considered in the FTC's case handling. Additionally, for cases with significant market impact, the FTC is clearly authorized to request related administrative agencies to submit opinions ex officio.

So far, the FTC secretariat, which investigated allegations of freight rate collusion on the Korea-Southeast Asia route, reported that 23 domestic and international shipping companies, including HMM, colluded on freight rates and sent a review report containing recommendations for fines and corrective orders in May this year. However, the National Assembly's Agriculture, Food, Rural Affairs, Oceans and Fisheries Committee and the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries opposed the FTC's sanctions, arguing that the Shipping Act contains provisions allowing joint actions by shipping companies, delaying the FTC's review of the shipping cartel case. The revision of the rules is scheduled for the 30th of next month. Considering the high possibility that the plenary meeting on the shipping cartel case will be held next year, the revised rules could first apply to the shipping cartel case.

Along with this, the FTC will expand the introduction of simplified procedures for small fines cases through the rule revision. The FTC's hearing methods are divided into oral hearings, where commissioners, examiners, and business operators gather in the hearing room to dispute legal issues, and written hearings, where parties' arguments are made in writing. In small committee cases where the business operator accepts the facts of the act and the examiner's recommended measures, a simplified procedure is applied to promptly resolve the case through written hearings. However, cases where the examiner judges that the violation is serious and requires an order to impose fines or prosecution (excluding consumer law-related prosecutions) proceed through formal procedures involving oral hearings. However, oral hearings often involve a waiting period before the commission's deliberation due to the large number of cases already submitted and awaiting hearings.

Therefore, the FTC aims to introduce a procedure that allows small committee fine imposition cases to be promptly resolved through simplified procedures by asking whether the business operator accepts the charges. The revised rules allow examiners to request simplified resolutions in small committees if the business operator's intention to accept is clear or expected and if the maximum fine amount is 100 million KRW or less. If the business operator is willing to accept, simplified procedures can be applied even to cases involving a certain scale of fines.

An FTC official said, "With this revision of the case procedure rules, the FTC's case handling will become faster, and procedural rigor and efficiency will be enhanced," adding, "The FTC plans to fully collect opinions from stakeholders and related ministries through administrative notice and then implement the revised case procedure rules in line with the enforcement date of the revised Fair Trade Act (December 30) after the commission's resolution."

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