On September 6, 1:30 P.M. at Korea University’s (KU) Haesong Law Library, a symposium was held on the topic of “Comparative Views to Economic Analysis of Antitrust Cases between the U.S. and EU.” This symposium was co-hosted by KU’s Innovation·Competition·Regulation Law (ICR) Center, and KU’s Social Science Korea “Law and Economy” research team. The main participants were the professionals who research on the field of execution on competitive law within the U.S. and EU.

During the seminar, specific topics such as “Antitrust Analysis in Dealing with Competition Cases in Innovation & Technology Context,” “Excessive Pricing Issues in Abuse of Market Dominance Cases” and “Influence of the U.S. and EU Competition regime over East Asian countries” were discussed.

In the first session, Willard K. Tom (General Counsel, Federal Trade Commission of the U.S.) and Kai-Uwe Kuhn (Chief Economist, Directorate General for Competition of the European Commission) each presented topics on the execution of competitive law in the U.S. and EU. After the topic discussions, the second session started, which consisted of debate and Q&A sessions.

Through this symposium, Korea anticipated to look at the examples of the U.S. and EU on how they execute competitive laws especially since the Korean government enforced the “Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act.” The overall atmosphere was light as open discussion was greatly encouraged residing from mere formal presentations and debates.

Professor Yoo Jin Hee (Law School), Manager of ICR Center, gave his sincere thanks to the hosts who provided this special opportunity for professionals to gather and discuss highly complex issues. “There still seems to be a large difference even among the U.S. and EU within their economic approach, analytic technique, and how they handle the results regarding the competitive law. However nowadays, as EU emphasizes the importance of economic analysis and the effects-based approach, such discrepancies are minimizing.” He finds that the level of awareness must also be increased in Korea, and that through this symposium, such objectives were achieved to a certain extent.