SEOUL, April 13 (Korea Bizwire) — The Supreme Court on Thursday finalized a ruling in favor of the South Korean antitrust regulator’s record fine of 1 trillion won (US$760.8 million) imposed in 2016 on U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm Inc. for unfair business practices. The fine was imposed by the Fair Trade Commission (FTC), which concluded in [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 14 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s antitrust regulator said Tuesday it has decided to slap fines of 25.7 billion won (US$20 million) on Kakao Mobility Corp., the nation’s leading taxi-hailing service, for manipulating its algorithm to give more calls to cabs under its franchise. The punishment on the operator of the app, Kakao [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 3 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s antitrust regulator said Tuesday it has decided to impose a penalty of 2.85 billion won (US$2.24 million) on U.S. electric carmaker Tesla Inc. and its South Korean unit for misleading advertisements. The move came as Tesla released advertisements in August 2019, which suggested its electric car can [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 11 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s antitrust regulator said Sunday it has decided to impose fines of 918 million won (US$697,000) on two local units of Pernod Ricard, a French distiller, for handing out illegal rebates to bars. The penalty on Pernod Ricard Korea and Pernod Ricard Korea Imperial came as the two [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 13 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s antitrust watchdog said Thursday it has decided to slap a combined 2.6 billion-won (US$1.82 million) fine on global pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca and local generic maker Alvogen on charges of forging a shady deal to avoid competition. Alvogen suspended its plan to release a generic version of Zoladex, [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 2 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s antitrust regulator said Tuesday it has decided to impose a combined fine of 24.4 billion won (US$18.6 million) on GS Retail Co., the operator of GS 25 convenience stores, for its unfair business practice. GS Retail received a total of 19.5 billion won from eight contractors in [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 15 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s antitrust regulator said Tuesday it has raised the fine slapped on Google over alleged anti-competition practices by 17.5 billion won (US$14.63 million) to 224.9 billion won. In mid-September, the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) decided to fine the global tech giant for forcing smartphone makers into only [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 13 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s antitrust regulator said Sunday it has decided to impose a fine of a combined 19.5 million won (US$16,300) on Google, Netflix and three other video streaming services for their unfair business activity over paid subscription. Five over-the-top (OTT) media service providers — Google, Netflix, KT, LG Uplus [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 6 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s antitrust regulator said Sunday it has decided to fine Mercedes-Benz 20.2 billion won (US$16.87 million) for falsified information on gas emissions of its diesel cars and ordered it to take corrective actions. Mercedes-Benz was found to have tampered with pollution mitigation devices by installing illegal software in [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 18 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s antitrust regulator said Tuesday it has decided to impose a combined fine of 96.2 billion won (US$80.7 million) on 23 Korean and foreign shippers for their 15-year-long collusion to fix freight rates. Since 2018, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) has been looking into allegations that the country’s [...]