Journal entry

Monopoly: Uber in Korea

The goal of this lesson was to try and understand the issue of monopoly of the Uber business within Korea. A monopoly market as we learnt is when there is one market that has the total market control in dictating the price of goods and services. Uber is a global car sharing platform that has seen a lot of monopolized success in many states.

This is however not the case with Korea where since 2013 it has not been able to acquire monopoly. For one there is a lot of resistance from the Korean taxi owners that are threatened by predatory prices of Uber and fear that it might drive other taxi companies out of business (Yonhap, 2017). On the other hand the laws that govern the taxi transport businesses are very strict. They only favour a certain percentage of transport businesses that are mostly owned by the government meaning that the government has monopolized the taxi business in Korea.

 I disagree with the thinking that Uber negatively impacts the taxi business in Korea. I can confidently argue that Uber is beneficial to the society; it helps in expanding transport options by extending taxi services to areas that are always underserved and hence increased revenues for the country (Chang-Hyun, 2018). Uber increases the options for transport in suburban neighbourhoods where it is difficult to get transportation during late nights or even during the day when the other forms of transportation is unavailable or even unreliable. This creates room for people to extensively work even during the night and this helps to improve the economy.

The aggressive model of lowering prices is a competition strategy that Uber uses in order to get more clients and it has positive outcomes for both the clients and the passengers (Meyer, 2016). I believe that the acceptance of Uber in Korea would help break the government enforced monopoly. Uber has been applauded for its success in others states that have fully embraced it and they coexist well with other taxi companies something that should be adopted in Korea.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Chang-Hyun, S. (2018). Why Uber is having hard time in Korea. Retrieved from

            https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/opinion/2018/09/726_247655.html

Meyer, J. (2016). Uber is Not ( And Will Never Be) A Monopoly. Retrieved from

            https://www.google.com/search?q=proactive&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-ab

Yonhap, Y. (2017). Uber launches car pool service in Seoul for diversification. Retrieved             from http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20170921000873