The Korea Fair Trade Commission said on the 23rd it imposed a 338.325 billion won penalty surcharge on six paper companies on suspicion of colluding to fix printing paper prices for about four years and ordered them to reset prices. The Korea Fair Trade Commission (FTC) also decided to refer two paper companies to prosecutors.
According to a Korea Fair Trade Commission (FTC) probe, six paper companies (Moorim SP, Moorim Paper, Moorim PnP, Hankuk Paper, Hansol Paper, Hongwon Paper) agreed to raise the prices of printing paper supplied to printing firms and publishers from February 2021 to December 2024. The six companies' market share was over 95% as of 2023.
Executives and employees who led the collusion met more than 60 times over 3 years and 10 months. When contacting each other, they used nearby pay phones, restaurant phones, or mobile phones of employees in other departments instead of their own phones. They carried contact details written on paper using initials or aliases. Using these methods, they raised printing paper prices seven times, and as a result, printing paper prices rose an average of 71%.
To avoid a backlash concentrating on the company that first notified clients such as printing firms or publishers of price hikes, the colluding companies sometimes set the order of notification among themselves. They decided the order by tossing coins or dice. The Korea Fair Trade Commission (FTC) applied a suspected violation of Article 40, Paragraph 1, Item 1 of the Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act, which bans price collusion. The Korea Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said it determined the level of the businesses' violations and the degree of involvement and decided to file criminal complaints, and in this case it will refer Hankuk Paper and Hongwon Paper to prosecutors.
The size of the penalty surcharge in this case is the largest among surcharges the Korea Fair Trade Commission (FTC) has imposed for collusion by paper companies. The previous largest surcharge was in a case involving collusion among 12 producers of corrugated board inner liners and six producers of corrugated board test liners in 2016 (110.8 billion won).
Nam Dong-il, vice chair of the Korea Fair Trade Commission (FTC), said, "We ordered each paper company to reset prices independently to a level that restores competition before the collusion," adding, "We also required them to report changes to the Korea Fair Trade Commission (FTC) every half year for the next three years."