Ministry of the Interior and Safety to Improve 874 Local Ordinances This Year through the 'Local Ordinance Maintenance System'

Easy Resident Participation, Central Government and Local Governments Collaborate Closely to Promote Autonomous Ordinance Innovation

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Cheol-young] The Ministry of the Interior and Safety announced on the 29th that it plans to intensively expand the ‘Regulation Proof Responsibility System’ and ‘Comprehensive Negative Regulation Transition’ introduced and operated by the central government to all local governments, improving 874 local ordinances within the year.

Since 2019, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety has supported local governments in introducing and operating systems to revise local ordinances such as the ‘Regulation Proof Responsibility System’ and ‘Comprehensive Negative Regulation Transition.’ The ‘Regulation Proof Responsibility System’ is a system where the public officials who supply regulations, not the private sector subject to regulation, must prove the necessity of maintaining the regulation, and if proving is difficult, they are recommended to improve the regulation. The Ministry encourages local governments to introduce a window through which companies and residents can easily request regulation proof via local government websites, and currently, 220 local governments are utilizing this system.

The ‘Comprehensive Negative Regulation Transition’ was introduced as a new paradigm for regulatory innovation in new industries to support the rapid market launch of new products and new services by flexibilizing legislative methods. Since 2019, the Ministry has supported improvements in comprehensive negative regulations mainly in local government affairs such as regional industry promotion and resident welfare, and by the first half of this year, it has discovered 1,842 tasks and improved 932 regulations.

Additionally, to systematically revise existing regulations in line with the central government’s regulatory reform direction, the Ministry registers and manages all regulations within local government ordinances. This year, a full survey of local ordinance regulations was conducted, and about 83.3% of regulations that violated higher laws or were unregistered were revised.

Going forward, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety plans to reduce unreasonable and unnecessary regulations and alleviate the burdens on companies and residents through continuous regulatory revision and improvement together with local governments.

Park Jae-min, Director of the Local Finance and Economy Office, said, “Since local government ordinances are closely related to residents’ lives, the continuous interest and efforts of the Ministry of the Interior and Safety and local governments to improve them are important,” adding, “We expect this local ordinance improvement to help stabilize the local economy and livelihoods, which are struggling due to the COVID-19 situation.”

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