Big Tech Zeal to Weaponize Trade Pacts to Fight Competition Policy Exposed in Absurd House Hearing Targeting South Korean Digital Anti-Monopoly Laws
By Lori Wallach, Director, Rethink Trade
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. And 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.”
The details Republicans appear to be ignoring are all but endless.
First, in South Korea, several large South Korean companies dominate digital markets 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” 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:
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.
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.
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.
KFTC imposed large fine for restricting rival access to taxi-dispatch platform.
Decision in force; no judicial challenge reported.
KFTC is investigating Baedal Minjok for self-preferencing practices.
Final decision pending.
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.