However, I don’t buy that the Korea Trade Commission will be an organization with the highest level of credibility, or that it can be impartial.

What a joke. Just google “Korea dumping”.

South Korea needs an organization that will fairly protect domestic industries from unfair trade practices by foreign players in the era of free trade and the Korea Trade Commission (KTC) aims to do just that, striving to be one with the highest level of credibility, its new chairman says.

Dr. Bark Tae-ho, 55, dean of the Graduate School of International Studies at Seoul National University, who was designated as the new KTC chairman late last month, laid great emphasis on “fairness’’ and “expertise’’ as the most required virtues of the country’s trade remedy agency.

“We need to continue our efforts to improve our expertise, objectivity and fairness in trade to remain as an impartial judge in the case of unfair trade actions such as dumping or subsidies,’’ Bark said in an interview with The Korea Times Wednesday.

Roger that, the Korea Defense establishment is just the same as the usual suspects — on steroids.

The defense procurement authority here is generally recognized as the most difficult to deal with in the world (something Coreans can be proud of). Convincing the guys at the home office to do business here requires adding margin.

Good point, though perhaps it’s worthwhile to note that there are at least two dimensions to this phenomenon.

The first concerns the end-users of the products, particularly in the case of high(er) end/luxury goods.

The second but actually the primary concern for most foreigners doing business here is the govt/local partner matrix.

Government (mis)regulation (and interference, even in the absence of anything remotely resembling legitimate authorizing legislation and/or administrative rules) and the brain damage of making (let alone maintaining and enforcing) deals with local “partners” create risks transaction costs that are a multiple of the norm in the international (not to mention, e.g., US or European domestic) business environments — in effect a Korean Risk Muliplier (TM) that is the analogue of the Korea Discount in the securities markets.

An excellent example is that presented by the current case, where MB’s troubles appear to stem from the “I die, you die” mentality of its former distributor Eugene, who has provoked this government investigation after being terminated by MB - (no doubt, for much more than justifiable cause) - with what are likely nothing more than unsubstantiated (and, ultimately, unsupportable) allegations.

Sometimes I wonder how much longer it will be before the rest of the world begins to so seriously question the wisdom of having pushed for the opening of Korea that it decides to let it lapse back into being a sort of holding pond for the toxic discharges of China. NB it not a question of “if”, but only “when”.

For Mercedes to charge a premium here is entirely in line with sound business practice.

The fact that MB charges its Korean distributor more than its Japanese and US distributors obviously doesn’t mean that MB makes less profit, but that the profit of the local distributor is (theoretically) lower because its cost is higher. The NTA has got its panties in a twist because they figure there is a transfer pricing ploy in play that thereby lowers the Korean-based profits and, hence, the Korean tax take, while MB is still enjoying the same or even larger profit that it is collecting somewhere else - either in Germany or, more likely, in some intermediate tax-advantaged location with a marginal rate of tax much lower than either Germany or Korea - in which case it’s multiplying the value of its after tax profit even more. And we know from the travails of Lonestar, Newbridge, and others - now including GE Real Estate - how the local mercantilists feel about that particular form of theft of their national wealth.