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Recently, as wealth inequality intensifies around the world, it has been considered as an urgent national task to resolve the wealth polarization. As a result, it has been argued that more comprehensive and diverse policy measures, including competitive laws, need to be mobilized to improve wealth distribution. However, according to the mainstream theory of modern competition law, competition law is primarily aimed at maximizing consumer welfare by increasing the efficiency of resource allocation, so it cannot be expected that competition law enforcement will directly contribute to the improvement of distribution. Although some studies have shown the co-relationship between market power and income inequality, in developed countries where ownership of corporate assets is fairly distributed, it has not been sufficiently verified that strengthening competitive law enforcement generally can effectively improve wealth distribution. In addition, modifying the criteria for determining violations of competitive laws to consider the impact on wealth distribution may further complicate the competitive law enforcement process, leading to arbitrary decisions, and increasing enforcement costs, at the expense of efficient resource allocation and consumer welfare.

On the other hand, Korea has competition law infrastructure for protecting the economically disadvantaged, such as some provisions under Monopoly Regulation Act and Fair Trade Act and many other laws on fair trade, so it can contribute to alleviating wealth inequality by considering wealth distribution effects in allocating competitive law enforcement resources. In addition, it can effectively contribute to alleviating inequality by using the KFTC\'s competitive advocacy power. However, it should be noted that the competition authorities\' law enforcement capability is such scarce resource that we should pay considerable opportunity costs of giving up other valuable competition policy goals if it is used for a specific goal.

Ho Young Lee
(Professor, School of Law, Hanyang University)

[Yonsei Law Review, Vol. 31, 2021]