우리나라 면세점 제도의 합리적 개선방안 연구

Abstract

The scale of world’s duty free market was USD 62 billion as of 2015 and it is expected to continue growing in the future. As of 2025 it is expected to amount USD 125 billion. As of 2016, the sales of the domestic duty free shops were the greatest at KRW 12 trillion and USD 275.7 billion, which increased by 33.5%.

With yearly increasing sales and tourists, the duty-free industry in Korea has been called as the ‘goose that lays the golden egg’, but the recent business operations of duty free shops are not as good. Since the 2013 revision of the Customs Act, the conflict over the patent system for duty free shops has been worsened and there have been suspicions for a preferential treatment in selecting new duty free shops.

In 2013, for the reasons of alleviation of monopolies and coexistence between SMEs and larger enterprises in the duty free industry, the patent period has been shortened and it was changed from the automatic renewal of the patent to the competitive tender system. Due to the political circles’ contention that in the duty free market large enterprises are given a preferential treatment to hold a monopoly status, the Customs Act was revised to change the patent system for duty free shops. The paten period for duty free shops has been shorted from 10 years to 5 years. Upon expiration of the patent period, the renewal of the patent is not permitted and business operators selected through competitive tendering.

Subsequently, after the year 2015 side effects have been appearing such as elimination of preexisting business operators and shrinkage of investment due to increased uncertainty in the new duty free business. This brought social problems such as difficulties in recovering previously invested facilities and funds from divesting the business due to a failure of the patent renewal for the duty free business as well as employment instability of workers to the fore. Additionally, the time-limited business period deepened the uncertainty for newly emerging enterprises in the duty free business, resulted from difficulties for robust investment, lower bargaining power to attract name brands, etc.

In the regard, the government in 2016 announced the ‘improvement measures for duty free business policies’ to change the patent period from 5 years back to 10 years and to allow the renewal of the patent for preexisting enterprises with no grounds for disqualification. However, the amendment bill did not pass through the National Assembly.

In addition to the institutional environment, during the year 2017 with China’s retaliation for Korea’s THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) and North Korea’s missile launches, the number of Chinese tourists dropped sharply. Lotte Duty Free Store, the top ranking enterprise in the industry, was not in the red in 2015 even with the sharply reduced tourists due to the MERS outbreak but it is unprecedentedly suffering with a deficit of KRW 29.8 billion in the second quarter of 2017 alone. A number of new downtown duty free stores in Seoul are still in the red.

Externally, neighboring countries including China and Japan recognize duty free stores as the infrastructure of tourism and are focusing on the promotional policies. In this sense, it can be said that it is a crucial time to refine duty free business policies to retain and support the world’s strongest competitiveness.

For the improvement and development of the duty free industry, it is important to understand the national legislation and explore ways to improve the problems in the legal system. For this reason, in this paper the patent system was examined with a view to explore ways for the development of Korea’s duty free industry and to make suggestions of improvement measures for the patent system.