소비자생활협동조합에 대한 독점금지법 적용의 문제점 - 보이콧(Boycott) 행위를 중심으로 -

Abstract

Consumer welfare can be considered as the same meaning of social welfare which has been the ultimate purpose of antitrust law. Generally, consumer sovereignty is a core conception to secure the consumer welfare. The consumer sovereignty requires guaranteeing consumers’ right of choice. In this context, consumer cooperatives could contribute to enlarging consumer sovereignty by allowing consumers to participate in a real market and choose directly products and services which they want. The consumer cooperatives' role in competition policy, therefore, could be considered to be critical in the meaning of complementing antitrust law enforcement. However, boycotts led by the consumer cooperatives may cause a competition agency to investigate the illegality of the consumer cooperatives’ behaviors. Contrary to the antitrust law of the U.S. limiting the application of the law to “commercial activities”, Korean antitrust law regulates all the activities of “business entities”. According to the Korean antitrust law, the consumer cooperatives should be subordinated under the antitrust law. On the other hand, the Korean antitrust law also stipulates an exception clause for small cooperatives including the consumer cooperatives. Nevertheless, the exception clause for small cooperatives could not exempt the consumer cooperatives from the responsibility of anticompetitive activities because it would not be applied to unreasonable anticompetitive activities. For this reason, the concept of the business entities under Korean antitrust law should be construed reasonably with flexibility, allowing the consumer cooperatives to lead political boycott to pursue whole consumers’ benefit