South Korea's Fair Trade Commission said on Monday it will impose provisional fines totalling 631.9 billion won on Woowa Brothers and Coupang, the operators of Baemin and Coupang Eats, for abusing their market dominance with pricing rules imposed on restaurants.
South Korea's Fair Trade Commission said on Monday it will impose provisional fines totalling 631.9 billion won on Woowa Brothers and Coupang, the operators of the country's two dominant food-delivery apps, for abusing their market dominance.
Woowa Brothers, which runs Baedal Minjok, known as Baemin, faces a provisional fine of 331.1 billion won, and Coupang, which runs Coupang Eats, faces 300.8 billion won. The regulator found that both platforms forced partner restaurants to offer prices, minimum order amounts and discounts at least as favourable as those available on competing apps, restricting the restaurants' freedom to set their own prices. Baemin was also penalised for pushing restaurants from its Marketplace service, where restaurants arrange their own deliveries, towards its Own Delivery service, and for advertising delivery times in a misleading way.
Together the two apps controlled 92.89 percent of South Korea's food-delivery market by transaction value in 2025, with Baemin at 58.45 percent and Coupang Eats at 34.44 percent. The commission voted on the corrective orders and fines at a full meeting on October 29 and disclosed the decision on November 9. Coupang imposed its requirements from July 2023 to January 2026, while Baemin's matching requirements ran from May 2024 to October 2025.
The regulator's announcement is the source for the figures, and Yonhap, the Asia Journal Press, MLex and AFP all report the same won totals and the same split between the two companies. The won amounts are consistent everywhere; the dollar figure is not, with outlets putting the total at $464 million, $466 million or $467 million depending on the conversion they used, so the won total is the reliable number. The fines are provisional, a point every outlet stresses, and the final sums will only be fixed when the commission issues its written decision. Coupang has said it will challenge the penalty through legal proceedings, and Woowa Brothers has said it argued its conduct was lawful and will prepare its response once it receives the written decision.
The penalties are the largest ever imposed on food-delivery platforms in South Korea. The regulator said the most-favoured-nation requirements kept menu prices high, made it harder for smaller delivery services to compete even when they charged lower commissions, and raised barriers for new entrants. The two companies' combined share of the market rose from 88.10 percent in 2023 to 92.89 percent in 2025.
Coupang was already in dispute with the South Korean authorities: earlier this year it was fined a record 624.68 billion won over a data leak affecting more than 33 million customers. The commission also ordered a re-examination of a separate case involving Coupang's alleged tying of delivery and streaming services to its Wow membership programme.