The nominee for the head of South Korea's corporate watchdog said Thursday that he will beef up monitoring of market leaders that hamper the entry of new competitors in the market.

Jeong Jae-chan, named to lead the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) last month, also said that he will ramp up crackdowns on price rigging and international cartels.

"I will step up monitoring and enforce laws in accordance with principle for market leaders that are abusing their monopolistic power to hamper new competitors from entering the market and hurting the interests of consumers," Jeong said during a confirmation hearing. 

"Price rigging will be sternly dealt with and more efforts will be made to respond to international cartels and global M&As to protect domestic consumers," he added. 

Jeong said that the Korean economy is faced with numerous structural problems, leading to slumping domestic demand and delayed economic recovery. Improving economic fundamentals and enhancing innovative capacity is the key to strengthening growth momentum, he added.

"(To that end), what we need the most is sound competition. If competition is restrained and unfair, market players will not concede to the outcome of competition and lose the desire to grow through challenges and innovation," he said. 

"The FTC's obligation at this time is to rectify abnormal business practices, establish a fair market order and build an economy based on strong fundamentals."

He also said that he would keep pushing for economic democratization, a drive aimed at reining in the dominance of family-owned conglomerates, but placed no less importance on economic stimulus.

"Since the FTC is the main government body that spearheads economic democratization, I will keep pushing for it... However, stimulus and economic democratization are mutually supplementary so we cannot see this as two different things," the nominee said. 

He promised to faithfully enforce a ban on additional cross-shareholding by large companies and rules and regulations intended to prevent owners and their families from profiting from shady intra-group deals. (Yonhap)