[2026 Parliamentary Audit] Joo Byungki: "We will strengthen financial penalties for failure to cooperate with investigations... and improve transparency"

Emphasizes zero tolerance for "obstruction of investigations"
Reaffirms organizational reforms, including overhaul of exclusive complaint system

Joo Byung-ki, chairperson of the Korea Fair Trade Commission, said on the 12th, "To ensure effective investigations and procedural fairness, we will strengthen financial penalties for failure to cooperate with investigations and improve the transparency of investigative procedures."

Yonhap News Agency

In his opening remarks at a parliamentary audit by the National Assembly’s Political Affairs Committee that day, Joo said, "To deter violations of the law and ensure penalties are effective, we will raise financial penalties, including surcharges, to levels comparable to those in advanced economies, while rationally overhauling excessive criminal penalties." He made the remarks as he outlined the commission’s plans.

Joo also reiterated plans to redistribute key powers that the KFTC has held exclusively, saying, "Guided by the vision of reforming monopolistic and oligopolistic market structures and building the foundations for fair growth, we will focus our capabilities on four key tasks and reforming the enforcement system." He said, "We will reform the exclusive complaint system so that a certain number of citizens, central government agencies, and metropolitan and provincial governments can file complaints directly with investigative agencies." He added, "To protect local small businesses, we will grant metropolitan and provincial governments the authority to investigate and impose sanctions in the subcontracting, franchise, and dealership sectors."

He pledged a zero-tolerance policy toward chronic collusion and abusive practices that burden household finances. "To fundamentally root out the chronic collusion prevalent in our economy, we will introduce a system to revoke the registrations or suspend the operations of businesses that repeatedly engage in collusion," Joo said. "We will expand more effective institutional safeguards, including establishing a legal basis for orders to readjust prices and extending the statute of limitations for sanctions against collusion." Meanwhile, to protect economically vulnerable groups, he pledged to "reform the framework of the Fair Trade Act so that collective action by economically vulnerable groups—including small and medium-sized enterprises, small business owners, self-employed people, and workers in special employment arrangements who suffer on an uneven playing field—does not constitute collusion, enabling them to make their voices heard."

He also proposed tailored regulations in response to changes in the industrial landscape. "For the principles of fair competition and innovation to take hold in digital markets as well, existing regulations on monopolies and oligopolies—which were designed primarily for traditional industries—need to be modernized for the digital environment," Joo said. "We will respond firmly to abuses of market dominance in digital sectors, including delivery apps, app marketplaces, and semiconductors." Addressing large business groups, he said, "We will introduce a surcharge system for conduct that undermines the foundations of business group regulation, such as submitting false designation materials or omitting affiliates." He added, "We will revise the system so that, when a business group is not designated as a publicly disclosed business group because it submitted false materials, the rules can also cover the extraction of private benefits during the period of non-designation."

Finally, Joo said, "By responding firmly to unfair practices and exploitative conduct by economically powerful entities, we will enable businesses to focus fully on their core operations and technological innovation. At the same time, we will concentrate the KFTC’s core capabilities on ensuring a level playing field for small businesses and consumers."

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