Report from The Korea Times
In Brief – The Korean Fair Trade Commission (FTC), the country’s antitrust regulator, has directed seven major ecommerce platforms to make changes to their customer terms of service to better protect consumer rights and securely handle user data. The FTC said it reviewed the platforms’ user agreements and identified 11 types of unfair clauses across four main categories used by Coupang, Naver, Kurly, SSG, Gmarket, 11Street and Nol Universe. The regulator says that the companies have agreed to revise the terms in line with the agency’s recommendations. One of the clauses involved Coupang’s former policy that prevented users from receiving refunds for prepaid Coupay Money balances after account termination, the FTC said.
Context – The second Trump Administration entered office far more focused on tech industry concerns than the first and declared that foreign regulation of US-based digital companies was “unacceptable” and could be met by retaliatory tariffs. Seoul’s proposal to toughen regulation of the largest digital platforms was criticized by the new USTR straight away and KFT officials said the issue would not undermine bilateral trade talks, and they didn’t. In recent months, the bilateral relationship’s most sensitive economic and security issues have been disrupted by the unique positioning of Coupang, which was founded in South Korea and is the country’s top ecommerce business, but is now publicly listed on the Nasdaq, headquartered in Seattle, and proudly wears an American mantle. The company has aggressively built a lobbying presence in the US that is focused on the Trump Administration and congressional Republicans, and has successfully injected its perspective on Korean digital policy into the highest levels of US-South Korean relations. For perspective, over 50 House Republicans recently intervened with the Korean Government to criticize its regulatory response to a major Coupang user data breach. Top Korean Foreign Ministry and national security officials have been pressed in recent weeks to address the issue and their intention to not let it undermine critical bilateral issues.