South Korea Is Targeting American Companies While Letting China Off the Hook, U.S. Industry Warns.

The average fine South Korea’s competition regulator imposed on American companies over the past decade was 21 times the average for Korean firms, while Chinese companies paid less than one percent of the penalties levied on foreign businesses, according to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). The figures anchor a wave of U.S. industry complaints that Seoul is squeezing American business nearly a year after promising President Donald J. Trump it would do the opposite.

South Korea’s regulators and ruling party are advancing a raft of measures that fall almost entirely on American companies, according to submissions from the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC), ITIF, and the Motion Picture Association (MPA), filed ahead of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative’s (USTR) October 29 deadline for comments on foreign trade barriers.

The pattern is hard to miss. A government that signed a deal with President Trump, and then refused his request for military aid in the Strait of Hormuz, is now punishing American companies hardest while China, its largest trading partner, barely registers. The filings amount to a test of whether Seoul’s promises to Washington mean anything.