Facts
Coupang, Korea's largest online shopping platform, both sells its own direct-purchase and private-label (PB) products and acts as a marketplace for about 210,000 third-party sellers. Its default 'Coupang Ranking' was designed to reflect consumer signals such as sales, review counts and average ratings. The Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) found that from February 2019 Coupang used three methods to place at least 64,250 of its own products near the top: 'promotions' pinning them to the top slots, 'SGP', which multiplied their base score by 1.5, and a 'cold start framework' inserting up to 15 items per query from 10th place at five-place intervals. Also, 2,297 employees wrote 72,614 reviews, averaging 4.8 stars, for at least 7,342 PB products.
Question
The question was whether a company that both runs a platform and sells on it unfairly induces its competitors' customers, under Article 45(1)(iv) of the Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act, when it uses algorithmic interventions to alter, in its own favour, a search ranking that consumers take to rest on objective data, and has its employees post reviews and ratings. The KFTC considered that pinned products could not be told apart from others in the results, that they included poor sellers and products on which Coupang was to receive supplier rebates, and that employee reviews looked like ordinary customer reviews.
Decision
After deliberations closed on 5 June 2024, the KFTC plenary held in decision 2024-284 of 5 August 2024 that both practices breached Article 45(1)(iv). Coupang and CPLB, its subsidiary supplying PB products, were ordered to stop misleading consumers by pinning their products near the top of search results or adjusting rankings to that end, and to stop presenting PB products as better than they are through employee reviews. They had to report on compliance within 60 days and, within 30 days, notify consumers, suppliers and sellers of the order. Coupang was fined KRW 162,824,000,000, and both companies were referred to prosecutors.
Why it matters
The decision treats algorithmic search ranking as a matter of consumer deception and sanctions a platform for departing from the ranking criteria it presented to users. Coupang brought an action before the Seoul High Court's 7th Administrative Division (2024누57899). On 10 October 2024 the court stayed the corrective orders but refused to stay the fine. Coupang argues that recommending products is the essence of retailing. Since the Supreme Court set aside the Seoul High Court's Naver Shopping judgment and remanded that case on 16 October 2025, the parties have disputed its bearing on this case; a press report of 22 September 2026 described the proceedings as ongoing.
Related stages
When it announced the case on 13 June 2024 the KFTC put the fine at about KRW 140 billion; it rose to KRW 162.8 billion once sales up to the close of deliberations were added. The Supreme Court ruling on Naver Shopping's search-algorithm self-preferencing is covered in a separate entry.