Republic of Korea: Ruling against Naver in KFTC investigation regarding abuse of dominant market position and unfair trade practices

On 6 October 2020, the Korean Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) issued a ruling regarding its investigation into Naver Co., Ltd. (Naver), finding that the e-commerce platform abused its dominant market position and engaged in unfair trade practices. The KFTC found that Naver favoured its own goods and services in the user's searches for shopping and video services and ranked them consistently at the top while lowering the ranking of its competitors. Naver did so by adjusting its search algorithm. The KFTC found this behaviour to distort competition and lead to non-objective search results. The KFTC fined Naver KRW 26.5 billion and KRW 200 million for modifying its algorithm to engage in self-preferencing.