Humidifier disinfectants manufactured by SK Chemicals and sold by Aekyung Industrial are on display during a press conference held by bereaved families of victims of the products at the Asian Citizen's Center for Environment and Health in Seoul in this January 2021 file photo. Newsis

By Park Jae-hyuk

The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) held a plenary meeting on Monday to decide how to sanction SK Chemicals and Aekyung Industrial over three online advertorials in which they had claimed that their humidifier sanitizers are harmless.

The products, which had been manufactured by SK Chemicals and sold by Aekyung Industrial, are among the various humidifier disinfectants to have been sold in Korea until the early 2010s that killed at least 1,784 people.

The FTC said it will announce its decision later this week.

There is growing speculation that the regulator decided to refer the two companies to prosecutors for their alleged violation of the Act on Fair Labeling and Advertising, as it is unusual for the FTC to hold a plenary meeting on a Monday.

The antitrust watchdog tends to hold the meetings of its top decision makers on Wednesdays.

Its decision to bring forward this week's meeting by two days is therefore interpreted as an attempt to refer the two companies to prosecutors before the statute of limitations runs out at the end of this month.

"The FTC is expected to refer SK Chemicals and Aekyung to prosecutors," said lawyer Song Ki-ho, who represents victims of the humidifier disinfectant. "There should not be a statute of limitations regarding social disasters that incurred multiple deaths."

According to the lawyer, the FTC reopened the case following a ruling by the Constitutional Court. The court said it was unconstitutional for the antitrust regulator to have decided in 2016 to exclude the online advertorials from its deliberations over whether to sanction the two companies.

When a victim of the two companies' humidifier disinfectant asked the FTC to sanction them for the online advertorials in 2016, the FTC did not regard the advertorials as ads.

After the Ministry of Environment acknowledged the toxic substances in humidifier disinfectants in 2018, the FTC decided to impose fines on SK Chemicals and Aekyung Industrial and refer them to prosecutors.

However, they were not indicted for their alleged violation of the advertising law, as prosecutors had said the statute of limitations had expired.

At that time, the two companies had claimed that their products were not sold after 2011.

Earlier this year, however, the Supreme Court accepted the FTC's claim that their products were on display until October 2017. Therefore, the statute of limitations has not run out.

The FTC is therefore allowed to continue its legal battle with the two companies.