Two years ago Korean Government scraped the plan to break up state-run Korea Electric Power Corp's distribution business. The government officials said that the introduction of retail competition would entail risk to hamper realization of public interest to provide residential customers universal access to electric utility service. But the recent evolution of the doctrine of customer service obligations in the U.K and U.S.A demonstrate that vigorous retail competition in the electricity business can coexist with the extraordinary obligations to serve vulnerable residential customers. At the time of regulatory reform the political compromises between economic efficiency and the protection of vulnerable consumers had to be made.

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