South Korea fines Coupang and Baemin over food delivery rules

South Korea’s antitrust regulator announced on Nov. 9 that it was fining Coupang 300.8 billion won (about US$220.6 million) over its food-delivery practices, according to Reuters. The regulator also fined Baemin’s operator, Woowa Brothers, 331.1 billion won, Yonhap reported.

• The Fair Trade Commission said Coupang and Baemin pressed partner restaurants to match terms offered on competing apps.
• Yonhap reported that the regulator said the conditions constrained competition and restaurants’ ability to set prices and other terms.
• The announced amounts are provisional, according to Yonhap.

The regulator said the platforms required restaurants to offer terms at least as favourable as those available elsewhere. Yonhap described these most-favoured-nation conditions as covering menu prices, minimum order amounts and other trading terms. The commission said the practices harmed merchants’ ability to set prices and trading conditions independently and impeded rival platforms.

How Coupang and Baemin enforced restaurant conditions

The commission said restaurants had little choice but to accept because exclusion from membership programmes could significantly reduce sales. Yonhap reported that the share of Coupang partner restaurants designated as Wow restaurants rose from 13% in July 2023 to 94% in October 2025. Baemin Club stores’ share rose from 63% in May 2024 to 80% in January 2025.

The regulator’s case concerned two platforms with large shares of the market. Baemin and Coupang Eats accounted for 58.45% and 34.44%, respectively, of South Korea’s food-delivery app market by order value in 2025, Yonhap reported. The commission said their simultaneous requirements and aligned trading terms restricted competition in a way similar to collusion; that is the regulator’s characterization of the conduct.

What the Baemin delivery shift meant for restaurants

The commission also sanctioned Baemin over what it said was pressure on restaurants to move from Market Place, where restaurants arranged delivery themselves, to Own Delivery, where Baemin handled it. Yonhap reported the regulator’s estimate that Baemin’s revenue share of transaction value in 2024 was 28% for Own Delivery orders, compared with 7.8% for Market Place orders.

According to Yonhap, the commission said Baemin reduced or blocked Market Place listings’ visibility and displayed estimated delivery times in a way that made the service appear slower. It said the shift to Own Delivery increased restaurants’ commission costs, prompting some to raise minimum order amounts and menu prices to protect their margins.

What the fines mean for delivery customers and merchants

The commission said its measures were expected to give restaurants more freedom to set prices and minimum order amounts across platforms based on their own business decisions, while encouraging new platforms to enter the market, Yonhap reported. The fine amounts remain provisional. Separately, the commission ordered a reexamination of a case alleging that Coupang tied delivery and streaming services to its Wow membership, citing differing interpretations of which products were primary and which were tied.