Kim Jong-seok, Chairman of the Regulatory Reform Committee, "Need for an Independent Regulatory Quality Management Agency"

KIAF Hosts the 12th Niche Hour Forum
Theme: 'Vision and Strategy for Regulatory Reform'

The Korea Industrial Alliance Forum (KIAF) announced on the 25th that it jointly held the '12th Niche Hour Forum' with the Global Industrial Competitiveness Forum.

The 'Niche Hour Forum' is a platform that invites busy policymakers during their morning, lunch, or evening breaks to listen to policy issues and hear policymakers' opinions on various industry-related issues, facilitating communication between the industrial sector and policymakers. Policymakers can hear the voices from the industrial field without distortion, and the industry can raise various difficulties and receive direct responses, which is an advantage.

The 12th Niche Hour Forum was held under the theme of 'Vision and Strategy for Regulatory Reform,' inviting Kim Jong-seok, the private committee chairman of the Regulatory Reform Committee, with about 70 industry figures from sectors such as automobiles, steel, textiles, and semiconductors attending.

Jung Manki, chairman of the Korea Industrial Alliance Forum and vice chairman of the Korea International Trade Association, pointed out, "The medium- to long-term outlook for our economy is not bright," adding, "According to Statistics Korea, the working-age population is expected to decrease from 37.38 million in 2020 to 33.81 million in 2030, declining by an average of 1%, or 350,000 people, annually. When the working-age population decreases by 1%, real GDP is expected to decline by 0.59%, and exports by about 0.2%."

He stated, "Problems also include difficulties entering new industries due to the surge in corporate regulations in the past, increased labor rigidity, and the sharp reduction in actual weekly working hours, which worsen competitiveness factors," and argued, "If these are not boldly improved, the overseas relocation of our industries will expand, raising concerns about industrial hollowing-out and long-term national economic decline."

He continued, "While responding short-term to population decline by expanding the utilization of foreigners and idle labor and raising the total fertility rate back above 2.1, if we fail to reform corporate regulations including killer regulations, it will become increasingly difficult to restore the dynamism of our economy by raising our global export market share, which has fallen to the 2% range, back to 3%."

Kim Jong-seok, private committee chairman of the Regulatory Reform Committee, said, "Regulatory reform is a process of improving the quality of regulations to more effectively achieve policy goals," adding, "Expected effects include economic revitalization and price stability, elimination of corruption, improvement of citizens' quality of life, expansion of private autonomy and creativity, and economic openness and internationalization."

He said, "The reason domestic and foreign businesspeople feel that Korea's regulations are excessive is not due to the total volume of regulations but the quality of regulations, that is, issues with the content and enforcement of regulations," and argued, "To solve structural problems, a cross-government horizontal control function and an independent regulatory quality management agency with a third-party perspective are necessary."

In the subsequent presentation from the business side, Choo Kwang-ho, head of the Economic and Industrial Headquarters at the Federation of Korean Industries, said, "The reasons why regulatory reform is not progressing well in our country include passive administration by the government and local governments, shadow regulations, easy legislative procedures and populist legislation by the National Assembly, vested interest protection by stakeholders surrounding regulatory reform, and the still existing anti-business sentiment," pointing out, "All regulations, including registered regulations, unregistered regulations, similar regulations, and illegal regulations, are targets for reform."

He proposed, "The scope of active administrative immunity should be expanded so that public officials who actively engage in reforming unreasonable regulations are not disciplined or held accountable, and the regulatory review process for National Assembly legislation should be strengthened," adding, "Rather than protecting vested interests of stakeholders benefiting from existing regulations, a competitive economic environment should be created by allowing freer market entry for new participants." He also added, "Under the current positive regulation system, it is difficult to respond flexibly to rapidly changing market environments, so negative regulations that only stipulate prohibited acts and necessary principles should be implemented to guarantee the autonomy of economic actors."

Kim Bo-su, chairman of the Global Industrial Competitiveness Forum, pointed out, "Regulatory reform has been promoted as a major national agenda by successive governments for more than 30 years since the 1990s, but the problem is that the private sector has always been the 'junior partner' pleading to the 'senior partners'?the government and the National Assembly?and that there was no powerful regulatory reform policy like the past five-year economic development plans."

Chairman Kim argued, "It is necessary to launch a '(tentative name) National Three-Year Regulatory Reform Council' involving the three main actors?the National Assembly including both ruling and opposition parties, the government, and large, medium, and small enterprises?and systematically promote annual plans and performance announcements of the top 50 or 100 regulatory reforms as two major tasks."

Meanwhile, KIAF plans to continue holding the Niche Hour Forum once a month by inviting top-level policymakers such as ministers, vice ministers, or heads of agencies from the Ministry of Economy and Finance, Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Employment and Labor, and others.

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