In July 2025 the Korea Fair Trade Commission fined the country's three mobile carriers — SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus — a combined ₩96.3 billion for colluding in the mobile number portability market. The three had coordinated for nearly seven years, from November 2015 to September 2022, to keep their market shares stable and hold down customer churn.
The coordination ran through a 'situation room' operated by the Korea Association for ICT Promotion, through which the carriers co-ordinated subscription incentives so that none of them would poach a dominant rival's share of users switching operators while keeping their numbers.
The final fine of ₩96.3 billion was split roughly by size: SK Telecom ₩38.8 billion, KT ₩29.9 billion and LG Uplus ₩27.6 billion. It was about 15% lower than the ₩114 billion the KFTC had originally proposed, after revenue from corporate contracts, promotional offers and users porting out to MVNOs was excluded.
The carriers argued their conduct aligned with what the Korea Communications Commission expected under the Mobile Device Distribution Improvement Act, which penalised excessive handset subsidies, and said they would consider administrative litigation against the fine.
They ran a shared 'situation room' to coordinate incentives, so no carrier poached another's share; the KFTC fined them ₩96.3B, split by size.
When churn is a zero-sum game, three rivals who each fear losing share can quietly agree to stop fighting — and a shared industry body is the convenient place to do it.
A 'situation room' that monitors who is gaining and losing porting customers is indistinguishable from a cartel's meeting room once the numbers start being steered.
The fine was keyed to revenue and the collusion ran for years, so the final bill — already reduced by 15% — still ran to tens of billions of won per carrier.
Any arrangement that keeps three competitors' market shares stable is a market-sharing agreement, however it is dressed up — and an industry body 'situation room' is a record of it, not a defence.
The three carriers said they would weigh administrative litigation against the KFTC decision, arguing their actions met the expectations of the Korea Communications Commission's rules on handset subsidies. KT separately filed suit to overturn its 29.9 billion won penalty. The case intensified a long-running debate in Korea about the two regulators — the KFTC and the KCC — applying different legal tests to the same carrier behaviour.
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