Pursuant to the recent amendment made to the Unfair Competition Prevention and Trade Secret Protection Act ("UCPA") promulgated on February 20, 2024, the Korea Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) now has the authority to impose corrective orders on parties that have committed unfair competitive acts. The scope of such unfair competitive acts include, among others, the act of causing confusion as to the source of a product, imitating the form of another person's product without authorization, infringing on another person's right of publicity such as their portrait rights, theft of ideas, etc.

Before the amendment, KIPO's authority was limited to issuing corrective recommendations when unfair competitive acts were found as a result of administrative investigations. Because corrective recommendations could not be enforced, such recommendations were considered insufficient to prevent the occurrence of unfair competitive acts. According to KIPO's statistics, corrective recommendations issued by KIPO were not complied with in one-third of the cases.

Under the recent amendment, KIPO can impose a fine of up to KRW 20 million if the offender does not comply with the corrective order without legitimate reasons. Moreover, a court that is reviewing a case involving the unfair competitive acts which the KIPO investigated may ask the KIPO to submit their investigation file to the court.