Prosecutors said they uncovered long-running price-fixing in South Korea’s corn syrup industry, a market they said generates sales in the tens of trillions of won, and indicted dozens of company officials. Investigators said the alleged collusion extended beyond the main product to byproducts, forming what they described as an organized scheme.
The Seoul Central District Prosecutors Office Fair Trade Investigation Division, led by Chief Prosecutor Na Hui-seok, said on the 23rd it indicted four manufacturers and 25 executives and employees without detention for alleged violations of the Fair Trade Act.
Prosecutors said the defendants are accused of agreeing in advance on when and how much to raise prices for corn syrup and related byproducts from July 2017 through October last year, restricting competition. The suspected collusion involved about 10.152 trillion won in transactions, prosecutors said.
The case is notable, prosecutors said, because the companies allegedly aligned prices not only for corn syrup but also for byproducts. They said they view it as “structural collusion,” alleging that firms shared information and reached prior agreements across the process, from buying corn to setting product prices.
Prosecutors said the companies moved quickly to raise prices when raw material costs rose, but limited price cuts when costs fell, repeatedly coordinating the timing and level of increases in advance.
They said consumers bore higher costs: During the alleged collusion period, prices of major corn syrup items rose by as much as 73.4% compared with before the scheme, exceeding the consumer inflation rate.
Prosecutors also said the four companies’ sales increased by an average of about 24.5% during the period, indicating that the price hikes were reflected in business results.
Investigators said they identified how the alleged scheme operated: Sales departments shared pricing information, coordinated responses by customer, and effectively ran a joint pricing policy.
They added that byproduct prices generated during corn syrup production also appeared to have been fixed in tandem with corn syrup prices, limiting price competition across the market for years.
“Through this investigation, we identified the reality of collusion across the corn syrup industry,” prosecutors said, adding they will continue to respond strictly to price-fixing in everyday goods that affect household finances.
* This article has been translated by AI.
Copyright ⓒ Aju Press All rights reserved.