<Anchor> The
Fair Trade Commission imposed a fine of 3.2 billion won on Coupang. It is said that Coupang pressured suppliers to operate the so-called lowest price guarantee system. Coupang has announced that it will file an administrative lawsuit.
Reporter Jeon Yeon-nam will tell you the details.
<Reporter> When
LG Household & Health Care sold diapers cheaper on 11st Street, Coupang demanded that LG raise the 11st selling price to 49,900 won.
If you don't raise the price on social media, they pressure you to stop selling the product.
We also demanded that milk powder company A raise the price of its competitor, E-Mart, saying that it is lower.
The Fair Trade Commission saw that Coupang put pressure on suppliers to prevent losses from operating a 'lowest price guarantee' system that matches prices with other competitors.
We managed 101 companies and 360 products in this way for about 4 years from 2017.
Products from companies that do not comply with the increase request are temporarily sold out or orders have been suspended.
In addition, 213 advertisements were sold to 128 companies, and 5.7 billion KRW of the cost of discount events was passed on to 388 suppliers.
[Cho Hong-sun / Fair Trade Commission Distribution Policy Officer: Detected (sanctioned) new forms of unfair trade practices in the online distribution market, such as demanding an increase in the selling price of an online distributor, and strong advertising.]
The Fair Trade Commission imposed a fine of 3.297 billion won on Coupang, considering it to be an abuse of trading position.
Coupang opposed the decision in 2017 that Coupang, a new retailer, had a superior position over large companies such as LG H&H, but the FTC focused on the rapidly growing influence of online retailers.
This is the first time that Coupang has been fined hundreds of millions of dollars due to the Fair Trade Commission sanctions, and Coupang has announced that it will file an administrative lawsuit.
(Video coverage: Yoo Dong-hyuk, video editing: Kim Jun-hee)