Korea drops memory price-fixing case

Citing a lack of evidence, Korea’s antitrust agency has ended deliberations on whether local and foreign chipmakers engaged in illegal price fixing. The United States had already fined the firms severely for price fixing between 2004 and 2006.
The four companies are Samsung Electronics Co. and Hynix Semiconductor Inc. of Korea, Micron Technology Inc. of the United States and Infineon Technologies AG of Germany.
In the United States, the four chipmakers were convicted of conspiracy to fix prices of dynamic random access memory chips, or DRAM, supplied to six U.S. computer makers including IBM and Compaq between April 1999 and June 2002. Washington fined the firms a total of $729 million between October 2004 and January 2006. Some executives were imprisoned.
Korea’s Fair Trade Commission then considered whether the price-fixing case also affected the Korean market. But the agency announced yesterday it failed to find evidence.
“The evidence was not enough to assess whether the local and foreign companies’ price fixing also applied to the Korean market or whether their actions in the United States had a direct impact on DRAM prices in the Korean market,” said Kim Byong-bae, vice chairman of the Fair Trade Commission.
As a result, he said, the commission cannot rule on whether the companies’ actions were against Korean antitrust laws in this case.
Kim said the agency had asked the U.S. Department of Justice for documents concerning the case in order to find evidence.
But Washington refused to hand over the materials, saying that they included secret information on the companies, he said.
If the antitrust agency finds strong evidence later, it will resume deliberations on the companies, he added.
The four companies accounted for 98 percent of Korea’s DRAM market last year. Korea’s Samsung Electronics and Hynix Semiconductor are the world’s largest and second-largest manufacturers of DRAM.

By Moon So-young Staff Writer [symoon@joongang.co.kr]