South Korea's Paper Price-Fixing Scandal: What K-Pop Fans and Manhwa Readers Need to Know

If you've ever wondered why ordering K-pop albums or manhwa volumes from Korea feels pricier than it did a few years ago, here is one answer you probably weren't expecting: a four-year paper cartel.

South Korea's Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) announced on April 23 that six of the country's largest paper manufacturers — including Moorim Paper, Korea Paper, Hansol Paper, and Hongwon Paper — had been secretly coordinating printing paper prices from February 2021 through December 2024. Together, these six companies control more than 95% of South Korea's printing paper supply.

The result: a ton of printing paper that cost 841,000 KRW in 2021 was selling for 1,439,000 KRW by the end of 2024 — a 71% jump. Over the same period, international pulp prices rose by roughly 10%. General consumer prices in South Korea rose 10% over the same window; printing paper rose seven times that rate.

How they kept it hidden for four years

What makes this case stand out is not just the scale — it is the tradecraft. Instead of leaving a traceable digital trail, executives coordinated through payphones and restaurant landlines. Competitors were referenced in internal notes by initials and aliases, never real names. The scheme ran across seven separate rounds of coordinated price increases, each pushing the base price up by as much as 15% or cutting discount rates by 15 percentage points.

It worked because the structure of the market made it easy. Six companies holding 95% of supply is not a competitive market — it is a near-monopoly that only needs everyone in the room to stay quiet.

Why this matters beyond South Korea

For Southeast Asian buyers of Korean content — K-pop physical albums, manhwa volumes, light novels, artbooks, photobooks — the cartel's four-year run landed directly in the cost of what you ordered. Standard K-pop album packages, especially deluxe and collector editions, include photo books of 60–120 pages of high-quality coated paper, lyric booklets, packaging inserts, and photo cards on paper stock. Korean entertainment labels source that material domestically, which put them squarely inside this cartel's pricing window.

Publishers, print shops, and newspapers inside Korea absorbed rising costs for four years. Some cut print runs. A few shut down entirely. The extra costs did not disappear — they moved into cover prices. The books and albums on Korean shelves today still carry pricing shaped by cartel behavior.

The fine — and why it may not be enough

• Total KFTC fines: 338.3 billion KRW
• Two companies referred to prosecutors for criminal charges
• First price redetermination order issued by the KFTC since 2006 — a 20-year gap
• Excess profits from the cartel period estimated at 60–70 billion KRW

With the six companies generating combined annual revenues in the trillions of KRW, analysts note the fine functions more as a compliance footnote than a hard deterrent. Class-action lawsuits are being discussed, but proving individual damages will take years — similar cases from South Korea's semiconductor and auto-parts cartel rulings in the 2000s and 2010s dragged through courts for a decade.

Will prices actually drop?

The KFTC has ordered a price correction, but voluntary compliance from oligopoly players tends to be slow. In the medium term, a rise in imported paper and alternative materials could ease the pressure. In the short term, the legacy pricing is baked in — and the books or albums you buy this year still reflect a market that was being manipulated as recently as late 2024.