[Editorial] Designating Coupang a “Dominant Business Operator”: A Blade Aimed at the Market Cuts Down Innovation

Recently, the Fair Trade Commission has been considering designating Coupang as a market-dominant business operator. This is highly likely to lead beyond Coupang as a single company to a sweeping expansion of regulation across the platform industry as a whole. In particular, although this measure is being justified in the name of establishing a fair competitive order, it also risks being seen as a political offensive in that it incrementally raises the level of regulation while targeting a single company.

Coupang, in particular, has played an important role not merely as a distribution company, but in expanding sales channels for small business owners and the self-employed nationwide and improving consumer convenience. Because the platform industry is structured to rapidly match consumer benefits with transaction opportunities, an approach that targets and regulates a company that has performed this function as “dominant” weakens market dynamism and innovation. Using an individual violation as a pretext to expand toward designation as a market-dominant business operator and broad, sweeping regulation is overregulation.

If this measure is implemented, regulatory costs and uncertainty will likely be passed on to sellers and small business owners. Online sales through Coupang have reduced logistics and delivery burdens for small business owners and made nationwide sales possible. However, if regulation develops in a way that pressures the platform’s overall operating methods and pricing policies, transaction costs such as sales commissions, logistics expenses, and advertising fees will rise, which will in turn worsen the business environment for small business owners and increase the price burden on consumers. The ripple effects will not remain confined to the company, but will directly undermine consumers’ choices and benefits as well.

Adverse effects are also emerging on the employment front. According to recent media reports, as uncertainty has grown, unpaid leave at logistics sites has expanded and new hiring has declined, and one analysis even found that about 6,400 jobs disappeared in a single month. Jobs in the platform industry are directly tied to the employment base of ordinary people in delivery, logistics, and field labor. Stronger regulation will inevitably lead to contraction in employment.

The Fair Trade Commission recently conducted an on-site investigation into Coupang and is also broadly examining its overall governance structure, including whether Chairman Kim Beomsuk should be designated as the same person (controlling shareholder). Proceeding simultaneously with discussions on designating it as a market-dominant business operator and an investigation into designation of the same person makes the regulatory approach appear, even from the outside, as a structure in which regulation is accumulating against a specific company.

From the perspective of a free-market economy, competition policy should focus on promoting competition and enhancing consumer welfare. An approach that singles out a specific company for regulation weakens the market’s engine of innovation and reduces small business vitality, working-class jobs, and consumer benefits. The Fair Trade Commission should stop rash stigmatization and excessive regulation, and make a careful decision only after first considering the effects on the market and consumers.

2026.01.15.

Center for Free Enterprise (CFE)

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Original title: [논평] 쿠팡‘지배적 사업자’지정, 시장을 겨냥한 칼날이 혁신을 벤다

Author: Center for Free Enterprise (CFE)

Date: 2026-01-15

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=comment&pn=1&idx=28493