중견기업 집단의 경쟁법적 쟁점에 관한 연구 - 부당지원행위 규제를 중심으로 -

초록

In recent years, the number of enforcement cases of the Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act(‘MRFTA’) targeting mid-sized companies or groups of mid-sized companies is increasing. The Korean Fair Trade Commission(‘KFTC) announced that it would take a closer look at whether mid-sized companies violated the MRFTA in the second half of 2023. In fact, at the same time, the KFTC conducted an on-site survey of groups of mid-sized companies such as Ottogi, Guangdong Pharmaceutical, and Daewoong Pharmaceutical, and in March 2024, although it was a subcontracting law case, it sanctioned Seongwu Hi-tech, a mid-sized company, for violating unfair special agreements. The purpose of this paper is to specify the competition law issues of mid-sized companies and analyze related issues to present policy directions related to mid-sized companies. There is a perception that mid-sized companies or groups of mid-sized companies are far from regulated by the MRFTA, especially unfair support activities. As can be seen from the text, it is clear that they can be regulated at both the level of follower and the KFTC regulatory practice under the MRFTA. In a situation where internal transactions of mid-sized companies are often mentioned in the KFTC's annual business plan, it is timely to review the laws related to unfair support activities and the enforcement cases of internal transaction regulations for mid-sized companies, and to consider related policy directions. In this paper, the main contents and laws of the regulation of unfair support activities under the MRFTA are summarized (II), and the case of unfair support activities of mid-sized companies is critically analyzed to consider the specificity of mid-sized companies (III), and the discussion is concluded with some suggestions (IV).

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