[CTC] Big Tech Zeal to Weaponize Trade Pacts to Fight Competition Policy Exposed in Absurd House Hearing Targeting South Korean Digital Anti-Monopoly Laws

Tue Dec 16 10:05:03 PST 2025

*ECONOMIC POPULIST*

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Big Tech Zeal to Weaponize Trade Pacts to Fight Competition Policy Exposed
in Absurd House Hearing Targeting South Korean Digital Anti-Monopoly Laws
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Lori Wallach, Director, Rethink Trade

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DEC 16

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*By Lori Wallach, Director, Rethink Trade*

South Korea is a perverse country to target with claims that countries’
existing and proposed domestic anti-monopoly and competition policies
“discriminate” against U.S. tech platforms. South Korean law’s dominance
designations capture both home-grown digital monopolists and foreign firms,
including U.S. companies.

Indeed, an October 2025 South Korean Supreme Court decision overturning
fines imposed by Korea’s competition agency against large local digital
firm Naver triggered a push for reforms by South Korea pols. You would
think legislators seeking to take action on digital monopoly abuses after a
lack of progress achieved through enforcement actions would seem familiar
in the United States, where a decade-plus of U.S. court cases have not
broken U.S. Big Tech monopolies.

Yet none of this is stopping Congressional Republicans from holding
hearings into South Korea’s imaginary malfeasance. On Tuesday, December 17th,
House Republicans, at the seeming behest of the Big Tech lobby, will hold
an odd hearing, “Anti-American Antitrust: How Foreign Governments Target
U.S. Businesses.”
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The details Republicans appear to be ignoring are all but endless.

First, in South Korea, several large South *Korean* companies dominate
digital markets
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 that U.S. and Chinese firms control elsewhere. Large South Korean tech
companies with dominant positions in the nation’s digital markets are:

   - *Naver *is a South Korean company that has 53% of the search market.
   - *Coupang* holds 38.6% of the e-commerce market.
   - *Kakao* is the company behind South Korea’s superapp, KakaoTalk, which
   is the main messaging app used in the country. It also operates Kakao
   Mobility, a large ride-hailing player in South Korea.
   - *Baedal Minjok* controls 64.9% of the food delivery market through its
   platform Baemin.

A beefing up of South Korean domestic competition policies that target
dominant firms will hit their home-grown giants as well as U.S. and Chinese
firms.

Second, Coupang, a firm launched in Seoul, might well be listed on the New
York Stock Exchange with a Delaware incorporation, but it is known as
“Amazon of Asia”
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 because of its dominance of South Korea’s online market. It is also
entirely unknown in the United States, outside some Big Tech lobbyists who
use it to try to claim Korean law discriminates against a “U.S.” firm.

This is balderdash. For years, U.S. trade associations that represent Big
Tech interests have used cynical claims of “discrimination” against U.S.
tech firms to attack South Korean authorities’ antitrust enforcement and
legislative efforts. But trade discrimination is about treating goods,
services and firms differently based on their national origin. It is NOT
discrimination to treat dominant firms differently in competition policy
relative to small firms, as long as the same rules apply to domestic and
foreign players.

Undoubtedly aware that cheering on monopoly abuses is *not *a winning
advocacy strategy, the Big Tech lobbyists instead play the victim to gain
an advantage. The first target in South Korea was an amendment to the
Telecommunications Business Act, enacted in 2021. It is all but identical
to the *Open App Markets Act* led by U.S. Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and
Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), with a sizeable bipartisan co-sponsor list. The
South Korean law—and the proposed U.S. one—focus on dominant app stores
with the power to distort markets, regardless of their national origin or
the origin of their investors. They also forbid certain abusive practices
against app developers and consumers.

Today the Big Tech lobby is specifically targeting two South Korean
initiatives, the “Platform Competition Promotion Act” and the “Online
Platform Transaction Fairness Act.” These bills, like an array of U.S.
competition policy bills as well as the EU’s Digital Markets Act and
Digital Services Act (not to mention similar UK laws), impose ex ante
obligations on dominant firms regardless of where they are incorporated or
the nationality of their owners and investors.

All of this demonstrates the true intent behind the industry’s claims of
“discrimination” when it comes to South Korea is to stop the enactment or
enforcement of policies against tech platform monopoly abuses. The
abundance of homegrown digital monopolists in Korea makes this more obvious
than, say, lodging the same critique on the EU’s DMA legislation. Much the
way Big Tech wants you to think that the EU policies only target U.S.
firms, instead of applying to large firms irrespective of their place of
incorporation, they want you to believe the same about the South Korean
laws. But again, the attack on South Korean laws to level the playing field
and prevent abuses of dominance in virtual markets gives the game away,
since *many* of the firms that are subject to regulation under South Korean
anti-trust laws are *domestic* companies.

This list highlights some of the most prominent cases among the dozens of
enforcement actions the Korea Fair Trade Commission has pursued against
domestic companies for abuse of dominance or other unfair competition
practices:

*Naver, 2020
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   - Alleged abuse of market dominance through self-preferencing in
   search/shopping.
   - Fine imposed by KFTC and upheld by Seoul’s High Court; Naver appealed
   and Supreme Court overturned.

*Coupang, 2020
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   - Alleged abuse of market dominance through manipulation of
   product-ranking/search algorithms to favor Coupang’s own private-label and
   directly supplied products over third-party sellers (algorithmic
   self-preferencing).
   - KFTC decision (Dec 2021): corrective order and administrative fine
   (approx. KRW 32 billion). Judicial review: Seoul High Court overturned the
   KFTC decision in 2023, finding insufficient proof of anticompetitive
   effects and faulting the KFTC’s analysis of algorithmic conduct.

*Kakao Mobility, 2023
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   - KFTC imposed fine and corrective orders for alleged manipulation of
   Kalao’s taxi dispatch algorithm to favor its own affiliated taxis (“Kakao T
   Blue”) over non-affiliated taxis.
   - Fine imposed by KFTC but overturned by Seoul’s High Court.

*Kako Mobility, 2024
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   - KFTC imposed large fine for restricting rival access to taxi-dispatch
   platform.
   - Decision in force; no judicial challenge reported.

*Baedal Minjok, 2025
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   - KFTC is investigating Baedal Minjok for self-preferencing practices.
   - Final decision pending.

*Kakao Entertainment, 2025
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   - KFTC imposed corrective order + KRW 390m fine for deceptive online
   promotion in digital music.
   - Decision in force; no judicial challenge reported.

The attack on South Korea’s digital competition laws exposes the Big Tech
lobby’s real objective: using trade agreements to block or weaken any
policy that constrains platform monopolies. South Korea’s reforms do not
discriminate against U.S. firms. They respond to repeated failures of
enforcement against powerful domestic monopolists, a problem the United
States knows well. Framing these laws, or the EU’s Digital Markets Act or
similar laws, as “anti-American” is a deliberate misdirection designed to
shield dominant firms from accountability.

Trade policy should not be weaponized to override democratic efforts to
rein in monopoly power; doing so would entrench, not challenge, the very
abuses that undermine fair competition and open markets.
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