By Wooyoung Lee ( September 26, 2025, 05:36 GMT | Comment) -- South Korea’s competition regulator has, for the first time, treated data as a core competitive asset in a merger review. By imposing data-sharing restrictions on the Shinsegae-Alibaba joint venture, the Korea Fair Trade Commission signaled that consumer datasets and the privacy safeguards around them will play a growing role in antitrust enforcement. It suggests that mergers involving e-commerce platforms, artificial intelligence services or other platform operators will not only be assessed by market share and pricing effects but also by the competitive power that comes from combining vast stores of data.South Korea’s competition regulator has, for the first time, treated data as a core competitive asset in a merger review. By imposing data-sharing restrictions on the Shinsegae-Alibaba joint venture, the Korea Fair Trade Commission, or KFTC, signaled that consumer datasets and the privacy safeguards around them will play a growing role in antitrust enforcement....
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