• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.49
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• pp.213-236
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• 2011

Korea Shipping Act admits shipping conferences' joint actions like rate agreement, sailing agreement in some degree for development of shipping transport industries for decades. Meanwhile, EU has prohibited all kinds of shipping conferences' joint actions since October 2008, and many advanced countries also have similar position on shipping conference. The balance development between shippers and ship owners is very important in terms of national economic growth. So it is appropriate time to revise related laws such as Shipping Act and Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act. First, It is direction for revision of Korean Shipping Act. The act has to define precisely the criteria of "unfairness" in case of admitting of shipping conferences' joint actions. Shipping conferences have a conference with shipper or shipper's delegation substantially on freight and transport conditions and so on. Second, It is direction for revision of Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act. The fair trade commission has to perform fair roles between shippers and ship owners. The judgement of fairness has to confirm according to the spirit of not Korea Shipping Act but Korea Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act itself.

• Korean Architects
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• s.518
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• pp.75-75
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• 2012

• Korean Architects
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• s.517
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• pp.75-75
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• 2012

• 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.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.295-316
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• 2011

If the medical staff privileges, which mean the eligibility to practice at open hospitals, are excluded in the United States, antitrust claims based on the violation of the Sherman Act have been raised a lot. The proliferation of these lawsuits in the United States, which are characterized as antitrust lawsuits, can be understandable situation. The reason is because doctors who don't belong to specific hospitals are seriously damaged, if the medical staff privileges are excluded and doctors cannot use facilities of open hospitals. In order to decide to allow the privileges of certain doctors, hospitals have to rely on peer review to maintain high quality of medical services, and it is not easy to find alternative of peer review in the professional areas like healthcare. However, there are possibilities that members of the peer review can abuse power to unfairly exclude privileges of potential competitors. In this sense, it is asserted in the U.S. antitrust lawsuits that the restraint of medical staff privilege can be the illegal restraint of trade in violation of section 1 of Sherman Act and can be monopolization or an attempt to monopoly by hospitals in violation of section 2 of Sherman Act. As Korea adopted open hospital system quite recently, there is still no case related with the exclusion of medical staff privileges. However, medical staff privilege system of Korea is not different from that of the United States in principle. Thus, the U.S. jurisprudence on the exclusion of medical staff privileges can be referred in the interpretation of "practice that interferes with or restricts the activities or contents of the business" based on Article 19.1.9 of Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Law of Korea.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.270-276
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• 2017

Previous studies of the effects of comparative advertising did not consider that comparative advertising should satisfy its legal conditions otherwise it would be unfairly comparative advertising. In this context, this study reviewed the current legal definition of 'unfairly comparative advertising' to clarify it by the definition of unfairly comparative advertising of the Guideline of Judgement of Comparative Labeling or Advertising based on the Act on Fair Labeling and Advertising. In addition, this study confirmed that comparative advertising was banned by the Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act, which was the previous act on unfair labeling or advertising, and identified differences between the two Acts in regulating unfairly comparative advertising. This study analyzed 354 adjudication cases of unfairly comparative advertising based on the regulation of Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act. As a result, the definitions of the two Acts of unfairly comparative advertising were found to correspond to each other. These results suggest empirically that comparative advertising was not banned legally in the past and the definition and judgement standards of unfairly comparative advertising have not been changed.

• 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.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.75-98
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• 2018

Recently, the antitrust tribunal of Seoul High Court revoked the disposition of Korea Fair Trade Commission(hereafter 'KFTC'). While KFTC determined that the restriction of Korea Pediatrician Association violated article 26 of the Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act(Korean antitrust law), Seoul High court viewed that KFTC failed to prove the compulsory measures and the restraint of competition required in article 26. The 'restriction' of article 26 should be interpreted as 'excessive restriction'. Since entrepeneurs' organization is allowed to limit its member's activities, KFTC could regulate entrepeneurs' organization on a very exceptional basis. In addition, though entrepeneurs' organization did not use compulsory measures to enforce its resolution, its 'excessive restriction' could fit into the notion of 'restriction' of article 26. Under the current medical care system, the price of medical care is decided by Korean government. Therefore the restriction of Korea Pediatrician Association is not likely to have effect on the price. However, the resolution of Korea Pediatrician Association was aimed to decrease the supply of medical care. Therefore the resolution is capable of having effect on the competition. In this sense, though KFTC failed to submit direct evidence to support the decrease of quantity, there could be possibility of restraint of competition. The Seoul High Court's decision has important implications. The leading case on restraint of competition(Supreme Court 2002Du8628, Posco case) was delivered in 2007. However the remaining issue such as the standard and scope of restraint of competition is not clear. Through reappeal case of this decision, Supreme Court has to decide the line between competition and its restraint.

• The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.117-149
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• 2015

On May 16, 2014 the Supreme Court of Korea rendered its decision with respect to litigation filed by All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd. ("ANA") for revocation of an order of correction and payment of a penalty imposed by the Korea Fair Trade Commission ("KFTC"). On or around September 2002, ANA and various airlines operating air cargo service from Japan to Korea were allegedly to have agree to introduce of fuel surcharge into their rates on cargo fares in an attempt to recoup falling profits from rising of oil price. As this hard core cartel was per se prohibited under Korean competition law (The Monopoly Regulation And Fair Trade Act), KFTC began an investigation and consequently with fruitful results imposed an amount of penalty and issued an order of prohibition. ANA protested against this imposition by filing suit against KFTC under the reasons that (1) their agreement was simply pursuant to the relevant laws and regulations including Air Transport Agreement between Korea and Japan, (2) there was an administrative guidance from Japanese government to allow this agreement, (3) extraterritorial application of Korean competition law to the agreement in this matter was improper as it was made within Japan and targeted only for the shipment from Japan to Korea: accordingly there is not a direct and serious effect between the agreement and any result of anti-competitive. This article aims to review ANA's allegation and the judgement delivered by Korean court under some issues respectively; (1) whether there is an effectively actual anti-competitive cartel between airlines including plaintiff, (2) whether filed rate doctrine is reasonable and applicable in this case for precluding wrongfulness, (3) what is the reasonable limitation of boundaries in extraterritorial application of Korean competition law. Additionally, this article also suggests to concern particular features of air transport business as an regulated industry in judging the unfair restrain on competition.