Fair Trade Commission Returns 550 Billion Won in Fines After Losing Lawsuit

Refunds of Penalties Totaling 551.1 Billion KRW Over the Past 6 Years
Song Seok-jun: "Unnecessary Penalty Impositions Must Be Corrected"

The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) has returned fines totaling 550 billion KRW to companies over the past six years due to losses in administrative lawsuits.

Fair Trade Commission.
Photo by Yonhap News

On the 17th, Song Seok-jun, a member of the People Power Party, announced based on data submitted by the FTC that the amount of fines imposed by the FTC and then returned to companies (net refund amount) reached 75 billion KRW from the beginning of this year through September.

Fair Trade Commission refund surcharge.

By year, the amounts were ▲165.7 billion KRW in 2017 ▲20.3 billion KRW in 2018 ▲134.8 billion KRW in 2019 ▲8.3 billion KRW in 2020 ▲7.2 billion KRW in 2021 ▲139.4 billion KRW in 2022, totaling 551.1 billion KRW.

The reasons for the FTC’s refund of fines include administrative lawsuits, additional reduction resolutions, ex officio cancellations, adjudications, correction of resolutions, and changes in disposition.

In particular, the refund interest generated during the process of the FTC imposing fines on companies and then returning them amounted to approximately 44.4 billion KRW, accounting for 8% of the total refunded fines. Refund interest refers to the statutory interest added to the refunded amount when the FTC returns collected fines to companies.

The company that received the largest refund interest from the FTC was Qualcomm Incorporated, which received 15.3 billion KRW. Cargill Agri Purina (3 billion KRW), Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (2.5 billion KRW), and POSCO (2.4 billion KRW) followed.

Additionally, it is known that there were a total of 105 cases in which the FTC either partially won or lost lawsuits filed by companies against the FTC’s fine decisions.

Among the laws under the FTC’s jurisdiction related to these cases, the Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act accounted for 67 cases, representing 63.8% of the total, followed by the Subcontracting Act with 20 cases and consumer protection-related laws with 10 cases.

Rep. Song said, "While the harms to market economic order caused by excessive economic concentration must be corrected, unnecessary imposition of fines should not excessively restrict companies’ creative economic activities or waste administrative resources and taxpayers’ money."

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