독점규제법상 ‘관련시장’ 획정의 의미와 입법적 개선

The definition of relevant market is the most critical step in the enforcement of competition laws in most of competition law jurisdictions. The Korea Supreme Court has also applied a very dogmatic approach to market definition on the basis of the conventional market definition-market share paradigm in a series of recent cartel cases. As an extreme example, the Court required the Korea Fair Trade Commission, the competition authorities to define relevant markets specifically even for proving anti-competitive effect of hardcore cartels in the same manner as in the typical merger analysisIn the light of the development of the relevant market concept in modern antitrust practices and related scholarly debates, however, such approach may be criticized as being ignorant of incompleteness and limits of the task of defining relevant markets in competition law proceedings. In particular, relevant market definition cannot make much contribution to antitrust analysis, for instance, where firms supply highly differentiated products. Market definition may be useful only when market shares calculated through the conventional methodology based on the market definition-market share paradigm are reasonably probative of market power or anti-competitive effect of the firm or her market behavior in question. The Court pointed out the language of relevant statutory provisions under the Korea Monopoly Regulation Act as the basis of such holdings. Although these provisions are not necessarily constructed so, proper legislative amendment is due in order to prevent the competition authorities and courts from being further misled.