• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.44
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• pp.180-222
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• 2008

This study briefly examines the regulation of market-dominating enterprises in terms of market definition, judgement about market dominance, judgement about abuse of market-dominant position, and types of abuse of market-dominant position. This study explores Korea Fair Trade Commission's judgemental cases regarding the prohibition of abuse of market-dominant positions under 'Korea Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act' and focuses on 21 cases related with Korean media industry. Based on this case analysis and literature review, this study derives major issues, problems, and possible alternatives in the regulation of market-dominating enterprises in media markets. And this study suggests implications about monopoly regulation and fair competition policy of Korean media industry.

• Journal of Arbitration Studies
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.49-72
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• 2009

Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC), one of the Government agencies, has been preparing a standard model form of Exclusive Contract for Entertainment Management (hereinafter referred to as "Exclusive Contract") to eliminate some types of unfairness that placed entertainers at disadvantage such as forced PR activities or activities without payment, excessive privacy infringement, and exemption of payment after the termination of the exclusive contract. The said Exclusive Contract was drafted by The Korean Commercial Arbitration Board (the "KCAB") in association with the Korean Entertainment Law Society (the "KELS") and KCAB has persistently persuaded Corea Entertainment Management Association (the "CEMA"; mainly actors management) and Korea Entertainment Producers' Association (the "KEPA"; mainly singers management) to adopt the above-mentioned Exclusive Contract, respectively, and especially arbitration clause instead of litigation. After KCAB's tens of meetings and persuasion, they finally decided to accept KCAB's offer and they have submitted the Exclusive Contract drafted by KCAB and KELS to KFTC on April 17, 2009. The arbitration clause drafted by KCAB was already accepted by unfair contract examination division and unfair contract advisory committee and the final standard model contract was supposed to be publicly announced on June 30, 2009 after final examination of unfair contract standing committee, but the announcement has been delayed owing to severe controversies between the concerned parties, such as CEMA, KAU (Korea Artists' Union), KEPA and KSA (Korea Singers' Association) related to delicate issues like contract period and ownership of intellectual properties, etc. But it is expected the announcement will be made very soon by which the contract will include the originally drafted arbitration clause by KCAB. Therefore, it is very timely to examine the various legal issues which can be arisen out of disputes, and arbitration appropriateness with Exclusive Contract of Entertainment Management on this paper.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.143-162
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• 2008

The Title 19 of the U.S. Code covers custom duties and is the heart of international trade regulation in the U.S.. Among the provisions in Title 19, is Chapter 4, the Tariff Act of 1930. Under U.S. Antidumping duty law, dumping occurs when `subject merchandise' is imported into the U.S. and sold at less than `fair value.' The administration of U.S. Antidumping duty law is shared between the Department of Commerce('Commerce') and International Trade Commission('USITC'). The U.S. Court of International Trade ("CIT") and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ("CAFC") decided the review of antidumping duty ("AD") determinations and administrative review results issued by the Commerce and the USITC, as well as the review of countervailing duty ("CVD") decisions. In Eurodif S.A. v. United States, the CAFC considered the important issue of whether the antidumping and countervailing duty laws apply to sales and purchases of services--in this case, the sale or purchase of enrichment services. Although the federal courts had considered the issue of whether a sale of enrichment services constitutes a sale of goods, the issue had never arisen in the context of the antidumping and countervailing duty laws. Also this is the first time that the Supreme Court has ever agreed to consider an antidumping case.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.27-36
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• 2012

This study aims to find out the effectiveness of regulation of promotional gifts and exemption of charges by analyzing the judgement criterion of illegality and the corrective action taken by regulatory agencies and suggests effective way of regulation. The results show that recently the differences of price-cut is getting bigger. In addition, Fair Trade Commission has considered discounts as unfair predatory price only if price is below the cost. But in the telecommunication business law enacted by Korea Communications Commission, 'expected profits per subscriber' has been applied as a key criterion. KCC's criterion is based not on the expected profit of individual service provider but on the averaged profit of services providers. It doesn't consider differences of service quality and the cost structure between dominant firm and late comers. Prohibition act of user discrimination result in the increase of subscriber and operating profits of late comers but this is not direct purpose of regulation. It can be desirable in the aspect of fair competition but since it may reduce consumer welfare, the criterion needs to be reconsidered.

• The Journal of Small Business Innovation
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.51-66
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• 2017

Online and wireless communications have dramatically changed the contents industry marketplace. Content transactions are now instantaneous as distribution channels move from the 'mart' to smart platforms, creating opportunities for content creators large and small. Yet with opportunity comes the threat of imbalance in the industry ecosystem. In order to ensure the health and diversity of an industry that relies so heavily on the welfare of small creative enterprises, it is essential to establish rules for the fair transaction of content rights. Several structural forces may work against such rules: first, the industry consists of a large number of small distributor intermediary businesses (e.g. major publishers); second, end distributors (e. g. platforms) maintain a superior, monopsony position; and third, economic valuation of content is difficult. In terms of acquisition business model, rights transactions can be classified into three general models: (1) license model, (2) original acquisition model, and (3) monopsony model. This study explores the publishing industry in detail, considering key statutes and their operation across the models. From analysis of Korea and the US statutes and case law, and decisions of the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) of Korea, we offer evaluation criteria for discerning between fair and unfair content rights transactions. We further recommend industry practice that may enhance the likelihood for fair content rights transactions, and thus a thriving publishing ecosystem.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.71-101
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• 2017

Since late 2016, protectionism has been a major trend in world trade with the Great Britain exiting the European Union and the United States electing Donald Trump as the 45th president. Consequently, there has been a huge public outcry regarding the negative prospects of heavy industry firms in Korea, which are highly dependent upon international trade with Western countries including the United States. In light of such trend and concerns, we have tried to predict business performance of heavy industry firms in Korea with data regarding trade policy of the United States. United States International Trade Commission (USITC) levies countervailing duties and anti-dumping duties to firms that violate its fair-trade regulations. In this study, we have performed data analysis with past records of countervailing duties and anti-dumping duties. With results from clustering analysis, it could be concluded that trade policy trends of the Unites States significantly affects the business performance of heavy industry firms in Korea. Furthermore, we have attempted to quantify such effects by employing long short-term memory (LSTM), a popular neural networks model that is well-suited to deal with sequential data. Our major contribution is that we have succeeded in empirically validating the intuitive argument and also predicting the future trend with rigorous data mining techniques. With some improvements, our results are expected to be highly relevant to designing regulations regarding heavy industry in Korea.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.50-58
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• 2023

Bid-rigging is a common issue in public construction projects, and appropriate sanctions are required from the relevant authorities. This study analyzes the need for an optimal enforcement model to prevent bid-rigging by considering both civil and criminal aspects. Recently, there have been overlapping sanctions under the Fair Trade Act, such as fines imposed by the Fair Trade Commission and civil lawsuits filed by the client for damages. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of penalty surcharges and compensation systems for preventing bid-rigging, and to consider the possibility of overlapping sanctions in public construction projects. It was found that overlapping sanctions under the Fair Trade Act can be helpful in improving the system. However, in cases where the state is the plaintiff for damages in a lawsuit, it is necessary to consider the penalty surcharge and sentence, reduce the penalty surcharge for joint acts, refund the surcharge after a final judgment, and consider the damage compensation system when imposing a surcharge. This study contributes to the development of an efficient enforcement model to suppress bid-rigging in public construction projects by analyzing the improvement effects of sanctions and compensation.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.119-133
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• 2011

The objective of this study is to establish the basic concepts for franchise agreements in consideration of both theoretical and practical conditions, to set the parameters for the discussion regarding the practical business matters pertaining to franchise agreements, and to analyze the criteria for determining the illegality of unfair trade practices based on research into actual practices in franchise transactions and on case studies of the implementation of laws by the Fair Trade Commission. The study aims to thereby contribute to the stabilization of laws in franchise transactions, benefiting all parties including franchise-related institutions, participants in franchise transactions, and related consumers. In conclusion, even in cases where regulatory exceptions are applied within the Fair Franchise Transactions Act when determining the illegality of franchised businesses, it is impossible to eliminate illegality unless all necessary and sufficient conditions have been included, and even if the procedure for evading illegality has been undertaken, illegality may not be eliminated unless the contents thereof are legitimate.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.249-272
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• 2012

This paper examines how a Korean automobile firm price-discriminates between the Korean and the U.S. markets. We argue that a Korean automobile firm's pricing behavior depends on the differences in price elasticity over the segmented markets between the countries. Our findings are that differences in price elasticity may help explain why a medium-class car's price is higher in Korea than that in the U.S. while a small-sized car's price is higher in the U.S. than in Korea, which implies that a Korean automobile firm $3^{rd}$ degree price-discriminates on the same or similar products between Korea and the U.S. This type of $3^{rd}$ degree price discrimination differs from a typical home-bias effect (charging higher prices to domestic consumers) because a small-sized car which is produced domestically sells at higher price abroad. This finding can be added as a source that violates the law of one price.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.97-127
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• 1991

This paper investigates the roles and the limitations of the Korean antitrust agencies-the Office of Fair Trade (OFT) and the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) during the making of the major industrial policies of the 1980's. The Korean antitrust agencies played only a minimal role in three major industrial policy-making issues in the 1980's- the enactment of the Industrial Development Act (IDA), the Industrial Rationalization Measures according to the IDA, and the Industrial Readjustment Measures on Consolidation of Large Insolvent Enterprises based on the revised Tax Exemption and Reduction Control Act. As causes for this performance bias in the Korean antitrust system, this paper considers five factors according to the current literature on implementation failure: ambiguous and insufficient statutory provisions of the Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act (MRFTA); lack of resources; biased attitudes and motivations of the staff of the OFT and the FTC; bureaucratic incapability; and widespread misunderstanding about the roles and functions of the antitrust system in Korea. Among these five factors, bureaucratic incompetence and lack of understanding in various policy implementation environments about the roles and functions of the antitrust system have been regarded as the most important ones. Most staff members did not have enough educational training during their school years to engage in antitrust and fair trade policy-making. Furthermore, the high rate of staff turnover due to a mandatory personnel transfer system has prohibited the accumulation of knowledge and skills required for pursuing complicated structural antitrust enforcement. The limited capability of the OFT has put the agency in a disadvantaged position in negotiating with other economic ministries. The OFT has not provided plausible counter-arguments based on sound economic theories against other economic ministries' intensive market interventions in the name of rationalization and readjustment of industries. If the staff members of antitrust agencies have lacked substantive understanding of the antitrust and fair trade policy, the rest of government agencies must have had serious problems in understanding the correst roles and functions of the antitrust system. The policy environment of the Korean antitrust system, including other economic ministries, the Deputy Prime Minister, and President Chun, have tended to conceptualize the OFT more as an agency aiming only at fair trade policy and less as an agency that should enforce structural monopoly regulation as well. Based on this assessment of the performance of the Korean antitrust system, this paper evaluate current reform proposals for the MRFT A. The inclusion of the regulation of conglomerate mergers and of business divestiture orders may be a desirable revision, giving the MRFTA more complete provisions. However, given deficient staff experties and the unfavorable policy environments, it would be too optimistic and naive to expect that the inclusion of these provisions alone could improve the performance of the Korean antitrust system. In its conclusion, this paper suggests several policy recommendations for the Korean antitrust system, which would secure the stable development and accumulation of antitrust expertise for its staff members and enough understanding and conformity from its environments about its antitrust goals and functions.