Sugar is white. And it looks, for the most part, harmless. When we tip a spoonful into our morning coffee, we don't stop to wonder where the white powder came from, who made it, or how its price was set. Sugar is just sugar — one of the most innocent-looking things in the world. And then, in February 2026, a 400-billion-won collusion case walked out from behind that white powder.
Until now I've been walking past walls that one company held alone. For a while, I'm going to look at a slightly different kind of wall. Not one company's wall, but a wall that a few companies stand along, side by side, and keep together. Economics calls this an oligopoly. And an oligopoly carries one quiet temptation that a monopoly never knows. It's just the few of us anyway — why bleed fighting each other when we could simply, discreetly, line up our prices? The story of sugar is a story about that temptation.
A White Market Split Three Ways
Only three companies, for all practical purposes, make sugar in Korea: CJ CheilJedang, Samyang Corporation, and TS Corporation. By 2024 domestic sales volume, CJ CheilJedang takes about half at 49%, Samyang about a third at 32%, and TS Corporation the remaining 19%. Together, 89%. Smaller names scrap over the leftover 11%, but this white market belongs, in effect, to three companies.
Why is there no fourth? Making sugar takes big plants and heavy equipment. But the wall that stands taller than that is the tariff. Import raw sugar, the raw material, and the duty is 3%; import finished sugar, and 30% is added. Ten times as much. So cheap foreign sugar has no real way of shaking the domestic market. Even when an importer brings in raw sugar aiming for the 3% rate, customs analysis usually rules it to be 30% sugar — or so I'm told. There is a door, but the threshold stands as tall as a grown man. And this tall threshold makes an exceedingly cozy fence for the three companies. Since no one outside can get in, the three inside need only mind one another. Which is exactly where the trouble begins.
| Company | Sugar market share (2024) | Collusion fine (final ruling) |
|---|
| CJ CheilJedang | ~49% | 138.3 billion won |
| Samyang Corporation | ~32% | 130.2 billion won |
| TS Corporation | ~19% | 127.3 billion won |
| Three companies combined | ~89% | 395.9 billion won |
Four Years, Eight Times
According to the Fair Trade Commission's investigation, the three companies set sugar prices together for more than four years, from February 2021 to April 2025. They moved the price eight times — six times up, twice down. One newspaper summed it up as "light speed on the way up, a tortoise on the way down." It would be hard to capture the nature of a cartel any better.
The method was startlingly organized. Executives at the CEO and division-head level would meet and set the broad direction of a price move; then sales executives and sales team leaders would meet again and coordinate when and how each customer would be notified. In negotiations with any given account, the company with the largest share of that account took the lead, and the results were divided among the three. It was less a competition between three companies than one company moving with three faces. It was a wall the KFTC broke only after tailing them for more than two years — and only then, thanks to one company's confession.
In February 2026, the KFTC announced fines totaling 408.3 billion won. In the final ruling that figure came down to 395.9 billion. CJ CheilJedang 138.3 billion, Samyang 130.2 billion, TS Corporation 127.3 billion. Even so, it is the second-largest amount ever levied in a single collusion case. But there is one twist at the end. The commission that had vowed to crack down shaved more than ten billion won off the announced figure in its final ruling. And the three companies wouldn't accept even that — all three have refused the decision and are contesting it in court. Even the hand that punishes a cartel is, somewhere, a little soft.
And the truly chilling part lies elsewhere. These same three companies were fined 51.1 billion won back in 2007 — for fixing sugar prices, the exact same offense. They were caught once, they were punished, and then they did it again. The fact that this was a repeat offense is what made the fine heavy this time; whether a heavy fine will prevent the next collusion, no one can say. It didn't last time.
The Higher the Wall, the Cozier the Inside
Earlier, writing about the three telecom companies, I said they moved "as if they had colluded, without colluding" — that quiet equilibrium in which the plans all come to resemble one another and no one cuts price first. The three sugar companies went exactly one step further. Not as if they had colluded. They actually did. And they got caught. The distance between telecom and sugar is closer than you'd think. The structure of oligopoly itself is always whispering that one step.
When no new competitor can enter from outside, the few inside lose any real reason to beat one another. Cut prices to win and everyone loses; read the room and match prices, and everyone is comfortable. The tall threshold of the tariff, meant to protect consumers, ended up protecting the three companies' collusion instead. Which is why, when I look at an oligopoly, I look at the market's threshold before I look at the shares. The higher the threshold, the more excessively cozy the inside is for somebody.
The 400 billion won in fines will, in the end, be paid by the companies. But the sugar price that was quietly stacked a little higher over four years — we have already paid that, split among us, through every cup of coffee, every bag of cookies, every slice of bread. A cartel's bill always arrives last, and arrives quietly. And it is usually addressed to us.
Inside the Colluding Companies
Inside the fence of the three companies that split a 400-billion-won fine, things are surprisingly ordinary.
| Company | Employees | Average annual pay | Average tenure | Revenue per employee | Operating profit per employee |
|---|
| CJ CheilJedang | 8,232 | 84.11 million won | 9.3 years | ~880 million won | ~23 million won |
| Samyang Corporation | 1,257 | 86.2 million won | 13.3 years | ~1.51 billion won | ~52 million won |
| TS Corporation | 320 | 72.43 million won | 13.6 years | ~3.25 billion won | ~150 million won |
Basis: FY2025 (2025-12-31) annual report employee data; revenue and operating profit per employee on a separate (non-consolidated) financial statement basis.
Pay runs in the 70-to-80-million-won range, tenure nine to fourteen years — not much different from any mid-sized food company. The sturdy structure that blocked competition with tariffs outside and quietly matched prices inside doesn't seem to have come back to the employees as anything especially generous. Where a cartel's gains end up is, for the most part, not in employees' bank accounts. Still, there is one odd irony in the bottom row of the table. TS Corporation — the smallest of the three, all of 320 people — grew its separate-basis operating profit by 114.5% in 2025, leaving 150 million won of profit per person. The old wall called sugar left its thickest share to the smallest company.
The next story is another oligopoly. This time it's the glass we tip at the end of the day: beer. I want to look at a quiet dominion that goes by the name of Cass — where one glass in every two, without fail, belongs to the same company.
This piece is part of the "Korea Value Chain" series and is an original work. It is an analysis based on public data and industry sources; some figures and assessments are estimates. It is not intended as a direct basis for investment decisions.
By Alexandro Lee · July 2026
댓글
댓글 쓰기