Prime Minister Jeong: "Strengthening Customized Psychological Quarantine for COVID-19... Increasing Mental Health Budget by Over 5%"

"Accelerating Regulatory Innovation... The First Year of Leap for the Marine Bioindustry"

Prime Minister Jeong Sye-kyun

[Asia Economy Reporter Kwangho Lee] Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said on the 14th, "We will strengthen customized psychological quarantine measures targeting high-risk groups for COVID-19 depression, such as confirmed patients and those in quarantine."

At the 121st Government Policy Coordination Meeting held at the Government Complex Sejong on the same day, Prime Minister Chung stated, "The government has prepared a comprehensive plan to promote the mental health of the people."

He emphasized, "Previous mental health measures have been focused on the treatment of mental illness patients. Now is the time to shift the policy paradigm towards creating an atmosphere where anyone can openly talk about their troubled minds and enhancing the state's responsibility for treatment and support."

Accordingly, he mentioned, "Through various measures such as developing specialized education and psychological counseling programs tailored to each life cycle, we will support the emotional stability of all citizens and actively work on improving the treatment environment for the advancement of mental health services and expanding rehabilitation support infrastructure."

He added, "The mental health budget, which accounts for only 1.6% of the total health budget, will also be expanded with the goal of exceeding 5%, as recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO)."

Regarding the '2021 Regulatory Innovation Promotion Direction,' Prime Minister Chung said, "Last year, the government made every effort to innovate regulations to revitalize new industries and stabilize the livelihood economy, but due to increased economic uncertainty caused by COVID-19, there were limitations in actual perception. This year, as the outlook is optimistic that COVID-19 will subside and the economy will rebound, we must accelerate regulatory innovation that can support this."

He stated, "The government will develop regulatory sandboxes and the transition to a negative regulation system, which received high responsiveness on the ground, into a K-Regulatory Innovation Platform. In particular, to increase the sense of impact, we will focus on improving unreasonable regulations in areas closely related to citizens' lives such as startups, welfare, and housing, and concentrate capabilities to advance new industries into commercialization."

Regarding another agenda item, the 'Global Marine Bio Market Preemption Strategy,' Prime Minister Chung said, "We have designated this year as the inaugural year for the leap of the marine bio industry and established a strategy for global market preemption, including the preparation of a specialized support system from research and development (R&D) to product commercialization." He emphasized, "We will actively utilize Korea's geographical advantage of being surrounded by sea on three sides to create specialized clusters for each marine area and provide focused support."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.