South Korea’s competition regulator announced provisional fines of 331.1 billion won on Woowa Brothers, operator of Baemin, and 300.8 billion won on Coupang over delivery-app practices it said restricted competition.
The Korea Fair Trade Commission said in its November 9 announcement that it decided on October 29 to impose the provisional penalties and corrective orders. It found both platforms abused their market positions by demanding restaurant terms at least as favorable as those offered on rival services, limiting restaurants’ ability to set different menu prices, discounts and minimum orders.
The KFTC said Coupang applied the requirements from July 2023 through January 2026, using access to its WOW store benefits to enforce terms covering six areas, including menu prices and customer delivery charges. Baemin imposed similar requirements on restaurants using its own-delivery service from May 2024 through October 2025, linking compliance to Baemin Club store status.
The regulator also found Baemin pushed restaurants from its order-brokering marketplace model toward its own-delivery service and used misleading estimated-delivery-time advertising. It said different calculation methods made restaurant-arranged delivery appear slower without sufficient explanation to consumers.
In a separate October 27 decision, the KFTC found Coupang’s commission terms unfair because they calculated charges on prices before restaurant-funded discounts rather than the amounts customers actually paid. It ordered Coupang to revise the terms, after consultation with the regulator, within 60 days of receiving the corrective order.
A separate case concerning alleged tying by Coupang was sent back for reexamination after disagreements over how the main and tied products were defined. The KFTC did not decide that allegation in this announcement.
JBizNews Desk | Seoul
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