The South Korean operations of global tech giants Dolby Laboratories, Apple and Google are likely to come under intense scrutiny at the country’s parliamentary audit next month on alleged market power abuses.

According to sources from the National Assembly on Sunday, parliamentary committees are expected to summon the Korean heads of the big corporate names for questioning on anti-competitive practices at the 20-day parliamentary inspections, which begin Oct. 10.

The U.S. audio giant Dolby, which licenses its standard audio technologies to electronics makers, is suspected of forcing its other services onto small Korean manufacturers and charging excessive fees on those that fail to comply with its demands. The allegations led the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) to launch a probe into the company last month. Last week, the National Policy Committee filed an order to summon the country head, Lee Sang-ho, as a witness to the October audit.

Apple Korea is also under FTC investigations for dumping the marketing costs of its iPhone to local mobile carriers. Last November, the country’s three major telecom operators - SKT, KT and LG Uplus - accused the phone maker of unfair business practices, claiming they had to pay for the TV commercials for the iPhone 8 and iPhone X as well as shoulder the costs of promotional events and after-sale repair services.

The FTC has already secured enough evidence that could prove Apple Korea’s market abuse practices in Korea, said an unnamed parliamentary official who asked to remain anonymous citing ongoing investigations.

Google Korea faces criticism of forcing local network operators to install cache servers at their own expense. It is also accused of paying disproportionately low network fees for its video-sharing site YouTube compared with its rival and local portal giant Naver, which pays an annual 70 billion won ($62.3 million) for access to the same network services.

By Lee Sun-hee and Kim Hyo-jin

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]