공정거래법의 기존 공적 집행 체제의 한계 및 실효성 확보방안

Abstract

Fair Trade Act aims to promote creative corporate activities, protect consumers, and facilitate the balanced development of national economy by preventing corporations' abuse of their market-dominating status and the concentration of excessive economic power, imposing regulations on unjust common acts and unfair transactions, and driving fair and free competition. There are two types of public enforcement in Fair Trade Act to fulfill those goals, and they are administrative and criminal sanctions. There have been, however, limitations with public enforcement in the process of achieving those goals due to the restricted investigation right and evidence collection of Fair Trade Commission(FTC), its passive exercise of right to accuse, and the limited exclusive accusation system including the prosecutors’ poor requests for accusation. Based on the premise that it would be the most important to guarantee the effectiveness of public enforcement to fulfill the goals of Fair Trade Act, this study set out to examine the limitations with the old public enforcement system and review improvement measures to ensure the effectiveness of public enforcement as well as overcome those limitations. Based on the findings, the study proposed the following improvement measures: supplementing the investigation rights of FTC, reinforcing FTC’s accusations, strengthening the professionalism of prosecutors, establishing the accusation criteria, introducing plans for the protection of rights when FTC exercises no accusation rights, improving the leniency program, and making fines and penalties realistic.