Government to ease regulations on new innovative industries

Jan 23, 2018, 08:41 am

By AsiaToday reporter Joo Sung-sik

The Moon Jae-in government has decided to introduce a comprehensive negative regulatory concept called "prior-permission & post-regulation" in order to open the doors wider for the fourth industrial revolution-based new technologies and products, such as self-driving cars, drones, and financial technology or fintech. As a result, new innovative technology-adopted products, such as ultra-light electric vehicles, IoT environmental sensors, and OLED-using traffic safety signs will be available soon. In addition, efforts will be made to legislate a bill on the introduction of the so-called regulation sandbox, which exempts and defer existing regulations when new types of products or technical services are launched in specific areas.

The government held the "Regulatory Innovation Forum" at the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae presided by President Moon Jae-in on Monday, and announced plans to ease excessive government regulations in new innovative industries and key innovation-leading businesses.

At the meeting, the government revealed plans to amend 38 regulations for the comprehensive negative regulatory transition, which refers to the transformation of existing negative regulations of "principle permission & no exceptions" format to the first-ever "prior-permission & post-regulation" type.

For instance, the definition of the existing 'marine fuel provision business' has expanded to include marine fuel supply business, enabling LNG carriers to supply fuel as well from the second half of this year. The definition of the light-emitting traffic safety display system, which has been limited to optical fiber, will be expanded to luminaries, enabling to launch OLED-using traffic safety signs.

The product classification system will be operated more flexibly by creating a new category so that new types of products such as ultra-light electric vehicles can be introduced to the market. In the case of ultra-small three-wheel electric vehicles, they don't fit into any category of car as cars are categorized according to their structure, size and engine capacity in the current vehicle-related regulations.

The negative list, which only prohibits those items that are listed and allows those aren't, will be widely applied to various technical fields. As a result, it will be possible to conduct research on gene therapy for various infectious diseases and chronic diseases that have been prohibited.

In addition, the 'pre-review and inspection' method, which made it difficult to launch new products and technologies, will be converted into 'self-assessment and post-evaluation' method.

Besides, efforts will be made to legislate a bill on the introduction of a regulatory sandbox, which exempts or delays existing regulations in the specific areas. The sandbox will be preferentially applied into four areas, including ICT, fintech, industry convergence, and regional innovation growth.

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