Picking Up and Putting Down Pork Belly at Grocery Aisles: Inside the Telegram Chat That Inflated Prices

At a pork display section in a major discount store.

Consumers continue to reach out to select pork belly and shoulder butt.

There were times when pork prices became so burdensome that the term "gold-pork belly" emerged due to soaring prices.

[Lim Sun-ja / Gangseo-gu, Seoul: We used to enjoy pork belly a lot. But back then, it got so expensive that we completely replaced it with cheaper imported beef.]

Last April, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) caught nine distributors supplying pork to large supermarkets colluding by setting a lower limit on supply prices, the so-called "floor prices," imposing 3.1 billion won in fines and requesting a prosecution investigation.

As a result of the prosecution's investigation, it was revealed that 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 floor prices for items such as pork belly and shoulder butt by category, and dialogue content was also captured where they unanimously replied "yes" in agreement to questions like "How about raising it from last week's unit price?"

When the FTC investigation began, circumstances were also uncovered where they deleted the secret Telegram chat room while destroying evidence and preparing for the investigation with instructions such as "Say you don't know much" and "Just deny everything."

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

The prosecution, estimating the scale of the collusion over the past six years to reach 1.2 trillion won, has indicted six pork distributors and 12 executives and employees on charges of violating the Fair Trade Act.

Destroying Telegram Chat and "Denying Everything": Hundreds of Collusive Acts That Created "Gold-Pork Belly" (August 4, 2026, 8 News)

Reported by Yu Su-hwan | Written by Bae Jun-hwi | Camera Filming by Joo Yong-jin | Video Editing by Choi Hye-ran | Produced by SBS Digital News
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.