Pork Suppliers Sued Over 1.2 Trillion Won Price-Fixing Scheme

[Anchor]

A prosecutors' investigation has revealed that companies supplying pork to major supermarket chains colluded for six years. The collusion drove prices up by more than 20%, totaling 1.2 trillion won in scale.

Yoo Soo-Hwan reports.

[Reporter]

The pork display shelf at a major supermarket.

Shoppers continue to reach out to select pork belly and pork shoulder.

There were times when pork prices were so burdensome that people called it goreum-gyopsal (gold pork belly) due to soaring prices.

[Lim Sun-ja / Gangseo-gu, Seoul: We use pork belly a lot. Back then, it was so expensive that people said imported beef was cheaper, so we replaced it with beef and ate that instead.]

In April, the Fair Trade Commission caught nine distributors supplying pork to large supermarkets conspiring by setting a lower limit on supply prices, the so-called bottom unit price, and imposed a 3.1 billion won fine while requesting a prosecution investigation.

According to the prosecution's investigation, they colluded on pork supply prices hundreds of times over six years from 2017 to 2023, driving up market prices by at least over 20%.

In a secret Telegram group chat created for the collusion, they shared lower price limits for each item such as pork belly and pork shoulder, and conversation contents were captured where they unanimously replied "yes" and agreed to questions like "How about raising it from last week's unit price?"


As the Fair Trade Commission's investigation began, circumstances were also revealed where they destroyed evidence and prepared for the investigation by deleting the secret Telegram group chat while telling each other, "Just say you don't know much" and "If you play dumb, it's over."

[Lee Jung-ho / Head of Criminal Division 6, Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors' Office: After establishing a communication system for collusion, when a person in charge changed, they handed over the collusion activities to their successor, and when a new company started supplying, they even made that company participate in the collusion...]

Estimating that the scale of collusion reached 1.2 trillion won over the past six years, the prosecutors indicted six pork distribution companies and 12 executives and employees on charges of violating the Fair Trade Act.

(Video by Joo Yong-jin | Video Editing by Choi Hye-ran)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.