온라인 플랫폼에 대한 중복규제 방지 방안

In Korea, various regulations on online platforms have been currently discussed among regulatory agencies and the concerns about unreasonable overlapping or duplicate regulations are rising. Such duplicate regulations appear in several types, such as duplication of ex ante- and ex post regulation, that of merger filings, and that of prohibited lists of unfair practices which leads to the concurrent application of competition law and sector-specific regulations. Given the regulatory-friendly environment in Korea and the weak independence of independent regulatory agencies, unnecessary and unreasonable overlapping of competition law and sector-specific regulations is likely to occur. Under such circumstances, it is important not to introduce unnecessary regulations in the first instance. Even when ex-ante regulations are required due to the lax enforcement of competition law, given the variety of types and business models of online platforms, comprehensive regulations on them possibly lead to over-inclusiveness and over-deterrence. In particular, sector-specific regulations on online platforms are justifiable mainly when competition law does not effectively work and when their grounds are evidenced through thorough market studies. It is also necessary to clearly demarcate regulatory jurisdictions of multiple agencies through rational construction of existing laws and regulations. Even when the legislation of sector-specific regulations are justifiable, it is necessary to find out how to handle the side effects of the concurrent application of competition law and sector-specific regulations. A joint jurisdiction model like the U.K.’s might be discussed, but it would be more effective to implement cooperations between the competition authority and other regulatory agencies through legislation. It is also worth noting that competition authority and regulatory agencies can reduce the unreasonable duplicate investigations on businesses through the joint investigation, which has been set forth in the Framework Act on Administrative Investigations since 2007 but has not been well-noted. In addition, strengthening the independence of regulatory agencies as well as competition authority and allowing them regulatory discretions to utilize soft and flexible regulatory tools which contributes to improve regulatory outcome and performance of agencies can be a way to reduce unnecessary overlapping of competition law and sector-specific regulations as well as that of sector-specific regulations from a long-term perspective.