▲ Yoo Il-ho, Chairman of the Regulatory Reform Committee
In the future, single-family homes with semi-basements will be allowed to install living rooms, and the mandatory suicide prevention training for small businesses will be completely reconsidered.
The Presidential Regulatory Reform Committee announced today (the 9th) the “2024 Regulatory Reform Operational Performance” and stated that out of 842 new or strengthened regulations proposed by central administrative agencies last year, they recommended improvements or withdrawals for a total of 95 cases.
The committee recommended regulatory improvements to the amendment of the Building Act Enforcement Decree, which prohibited the installation of living rooms in basements of single and multi-family homes, as well as elderly and children’s facilities.
Initially, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport held the position that living room installations should be prohibited in basements to prevent flood damage of semi-basement houses. However, the committee decided that living room installations should be allowed for purposes other than residential attachments to prevent excessive restrictions on property rights.
They also recommended improvements to the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s plan to make suicide prevention training mandatory for small businesses with more than 30 employees.
If the mandatory education extends to businesses with 30 or more employees, the number of trainees would reach nine million, increasing corporate burdens, while the effectiveness of expanded training remains uncertain according to the committee’s judgement.
The committee recommended reassessing the target and scope of the training by comprehensively considering its effectiveness.
Moreover, the committee advised removing “important raw materials” from the Fair Trade Commission’s revised notice that imposes fines if companies change the content ratio without notifying consumers.
This is due to the ambiguity of what constitutes important raw materials, like whether it’s the banana or milk in “banana-flavored milk,” making it unclear what consumer notification obligations companies must fulfill.
Additionally, the committee suggested lowering the work experience requirement for personal data protection officers from six to four years, and recommended regulations to prevent webtoon and web novel sellers from unfairly passing on discount costs to authors.
Lastly, the committee reported that they had adjusted 191 out of 740 regulations that reached their reconsideration deadline last year.