Ju Biung-ghi, Chairperson of the Korea Fair Trade Commission, said at a presidential policy briefing on the 4th that "Korea's delivery app (application) commission rate is above average (compared with other countries)," adding, "It should be lowered from where it is now." President Lee Jae-myung then said, "If the problem of excessive fees due to monopoly can be properly controlled, use your authority to try to control it."
The remarks by Chairperson Ju and President Lee came after a member of the public attending the briefing said delivery app commission rates are excessive. Lee said, "When I was Gyeonggi governor, I tried to create a public delivery app to make it compete with the private sector, but after I left office, fiscal support for delivery apps was sharply reduced and it effectively disappeared." He added, "Shouldn't we maintain a competitive system by supporting a public delivery app?"
Lee also noted that the market effectively became monopolized after Delivery Hero of Germany, the parent company of Yogiyo, which had been the No. 2 delivery app, acquired Woowa Brothers, the operator of Baemin, the No. 1 company, in 2020.
In response, Chairperson Ju said, "Monopolization in the delivery app market has advanced to a degree that cannot be compared with the offline market." He continued, "The reason a public delivery app cannot succeed is that monopolization (in delivery apps) has progressed so far that competition is restricted."
Lee asked, "Isn't it realistically difficult to directly control fees?" Ju said, "It's about at what level to set a fee cap, and as long as it isn't set excessively low, (it's fine)." Lee then said, "If you can control it, use your authority and try to control it."
Noh Yong-seok, acting Minister of the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, said, "It is important to control the commission rate itself, but the items that make up the fee are not disclosed," adding, "There is also a way to make disclosure mandatory through legal revisions." Lee said, "Take the necessary steps together with the Korea Fair Trade Commission (FTC)."