• The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.117-149
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• 2015

On May 16, 2014 the Supreme Court of Korea rendered its decision with respect to litigation filed by All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd. ("ANA") for revocation of an order of correction and payment of a penalty imposed by the Korea Fair Trade Commission ("KFTC"). On or around September 2002, ANA and various airlines operating air cargo service from Japan to Korea were allegedly to have agree to introduce of fuel surcharge into their rates on cargo fares in an attempt to recoup falling profits from rising of oil price. As this hard core cartel was per se prohibited under Korean competition law (The Monopoly Regulation And Fair Trade Act), KFTC began an investigation and consequently with fruitful results imposed an amount of penalty and issued an order of prohibition. ANA protested against this imposition by filing suit against KFTC under the reasons that (1) their agreement was simply pursuant to the relevant laws and regulations including Air Transport Agreement between Korea and Japan, (2) there was an administrative guidance from Japanese government to allow this agreement, (3) extraterritorial application of Korean competition law to the agreement in this matter was improper as it was made within Japan and targeted only for the shipment from Japan to Korea: accordingly there is not a direct and serious effect between the agreement and any result of anti-competitive. This article aims to review ANA's allegation and the judgement delivered by Korean court under some issues respectively; (1) whether there is an effectively actual anti-competitive cartel between airlines including plaintiff, (2) whether filed rate doctrine is reasonable and applicable in this case for precluding wrongfulness, (3) what is the reasonable limitation of boundaries in extraterritorial application of Korean competition law. Additionally, this article also suggests to concern particular features of air transport business as an regulated industry in judging the unfair restrain on competition.