수직적거래 규제의 개선방안

Abstract

In a contract, the situation cannot be avoided where the power balance between parties cannot be maintained, where coercion from one party is ongoing and where the other party suffers from the burden of maintaining lock-in facilities and retrieving investment money, which makes it easier for one party to use weapons like cancelation of the contract or refusal to renewal of the contract and to offer the other party with disadvantageous terms and conditions for the contract. These abusive powers from one party put on the other party bring severe harms to economic situation of Korea where monopoly and oligopoly rules. KFTC has struggled to cure the unfairness in vertical trade including abusing of trade position, which, as a matter of fact, has been not enough. To eliminate the harm of vertical transactions, the problem of regulation related to vertical trade should be improved. In the Korea Fair Trade Act, the vertical restraints can be classified into competition restrictiveness-type vertical restraints and the abusing of position-type vertical restraints. competition restrictiveness-type vertical restraints are divided into inter-brand competition and intra-brand competition. Abusing of position-type vertical restraints refer to abusing of the position in trade, which judges the illegality based on the unfairness of the transaction content, not on the competition restrictions. In order to bring fairness to vertical trade, it is necessary to bring the viewpoint from form-based judgement to effect-based judgement of the act, looking closely into nature of the act in order to assess illegality. Furthermore, in these days when intervention of administration is inevitable while civil suits do not always work for fairness, the administration need to move from stance merely imposing penalty and issuing correction order to the stance providing the very remedies victims want for the injuries