With the midterms behind us, the new Democratic majority has a chance to act. House Democrats are debating the future of the Select Committee on China. They should not only keep the committee but also expand it to include the relationships between Washington, Seoul and Beijing. Why are South Korea’s regulators coming down hardest on American companies while Chinese firms go nearly untouched, and while U.S. regulators cut slack for South Korean investors?
Rep. Ro Khanna (Fremont), the committee’s top Democrat, is the right person to lead that work, regardless of his presidential aspirations. He represents Silicon Valley, home to many of the companies at stake, and no Democrat has yet claimed the U.S.-China-Korea portfolio. The gavel would give Khanna a platform to own it and to sharpen his foreign policy credentials.
The committee already has a test case. After the New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence officials believe a businesswoman with whom Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang has admitted an affair worked for the Chinese government, the panel’s Republican chair joined two other chairs in asking Huang to brief lawmakers. Nvidia’s board has opened its own inquiry. Beijing calls the reports “groundless speculation.” That is exactly the kind of oversight Khanna should lead. Democrats should make this issue their own and build on it to include South Korea — an important trading partner with whom the U.S. has an increasingly complicated relationship.
Few countries have been welcomed into the American economy as warmly as South Korea.
Samsung is building a leading-edge chip complex in Taylor, Texas, backed by up to $4.745 billion in federal funding. Hyundai’s $7.6 billion Metaplant outside Savannah is the largest economic development project in Georgia’s history. Under last year’s trade agreement, Seoul committed another $350 billion in U.S. investment.
Washington has Seoul as an ally. When federal agents detained more than 300 South Korean workers at a Georgia battery plant in September 2025, the State Department clarified visa rules for South Korean firms and opened a Korean Investor Desk in Seoul.
American investors in South Korea have not been treated the same way.
While Hyundai breaks sales records here, Ford shuttered its Korean subsidiary after 30 years. And the Korea Fair Trade Commission hit Google with a $170 million fine over its licensing agreement with Samsung.
Seattle-based Coupang is the largest single source of U.S. direct investment in Korea. After a data breach by a former employee, South Korea’s privacy regulator fined the company $409 million, a record for a data breach, while other agencies opened investigations into matters unrelated to the breach. A House Judiciary Committee staff report documented the targeting. A White House official said Coupang was being “singled out.”
Two new studies of a decade of KFTC decisions, by the Computer & Communications Industry Assn. and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, found that U.S. companies were fined four to seven times more than South Korean companies relative to the scale of business conducted. American firms accounted for less than 5% of the business activity the association measured but paid nearly one in four dollars in fines. The foundation found the average fine on an American company was about $29 million, versus $1.4 million for a South Korean one. Chinese firms drew less than 1% of the fines levied on foreign companies; Americans drew more than 81%.
In a filing with the U.S. Trade Representative, the foundation said disparities “warrant closer scrutiny of Korea’s compliance with its 2025 bilateral nondiscrimination commitments.”
South Korean companies in America get national treatment: the same laws, courts and access to federal programs as their American competitors. American companies in South Korea face enforcement that appears to turn on the nationality of their shareholders.
Seoul has already agreed this should change. Last year, South Korea pledged not to discriminate against U.S. companies in digital regulation and to guarantee fair process in competition cases. A year later, it is doing the opposite, pushing new platform legislation instead.
The right response is to keep America’s door open and hold Seoul to its word. The communication industry association has urged the U.S. government to investigate the KFTC’s conduct as a possible breach of South Korea’s national treatment obligations under the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement. The U.S. should investigate, and the two governments should make Seoul’s commitment binding.
Reciprocity between allies means each side extends the treatment it expects to receive. Seoul asked for fair, predictable rules when its companies needed them, and Washington delivered. American investors in South Korea are asking for the same.
Kurt Bardella is a Democratic Party strategist and a former senior advisor for Republicans on the House Oversight Committee.
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