South Korea’s competition regulator on Thursday conditionally approved a joint venture between Alibaba International’s AliExpress Korea and a unit of local company Shinsegae, but cited concerns over the sharing of customer information.
The Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) in a statement noted a “significant worry” over the joint venture that will control Korean e-commerce platform Gmarket and AliExpress Korea.
Sharing Gmarket’s information on 50 million Korean customers and utilising Ali’s data analysis technology would increase their dominance of the local online shopping industry, the regulator said.
The companies must show they can independently manage their businesses and would be prohibited from sharing data on overseas shopping by Korean customers within three years, the KFTC said.
The joint venture would increase their total market share in overseas online shopping to 41% and the share may rise amid AliExpress’s aggressive expansion in Korea, it said.
Online shopping by Koreans for products shipped from China increased 32% to 4.7 trillion won ($3.40 billion) in 2024 from a year earlier, according to the commission. Alibaba accounted for 62% of the sales by value, it said.
($1 = 1,382.4000 won)
Reuters
