At the 4th Special Regulation Innovation Task Force (headed by Vice Minister Kwon, Gi Seob), the Ministry
of Employment and Labor (MOEL), headed by Minister Lee, Jung Sik, decided to simplify a variety of
reporting, application, and submission procedures and improve entry requirements by the end of this year.
1. Reporting/Application/Submission simplification for public convenience
1)All documents required for employers when applying for employment promotion subsidies will be
drastically streamlined (in December). Employment centers have required employers to submit employment
contracts, payrolls, and sales data to check wages and sales when paying subsidies.
In the future, the MOEL plans to consult with government agencies to use their data (average monthly
remuneration amounts, taxation data, etc.)—rather than requiring employers to separately submit such
documents—to determine whether to pay subsidies and to revise laws and statutes to minimize document
preparation burdens for applicants.
2)Regarding the report of changes in asbestos abatement work, laws will be revised to exempt reporting
for work with low change reporting necessities (December).
Prior to work, asbestos abatement workers are required to report to local MOEL offices, and report any
changes to the reporting to those offices without delay. To reduce administrative burdens and streamline
work processes, this requirement will be changed to exempt reporting when the benefits of changes in
reporting—such as work cancellation, reduction of quantity of work, and simple work period
extensions—are small.
3)Individuals wishing to manufacture or import materials subject to Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) are
currently required to write and submit an MSDS to the Korea Occupational Safety & Health Agency
(KOSHA) before manufacturing or importing.
However, since only the manufacturer or importer of the concerned materials can write and submit an
MSDS, commissioned manufacturers have prepared and submitted MSDS documents even for original
equipment manufacturing.
- An MSDS is a kind of an instruction manual that explains how to work safely with the chemical product
and consist of sixteen items, including the registration number, characteristics of chemical materials,
information on potential hazards, and handling methods.
Accordingly, even if individuals who commission manufacturing wish to keep ingredient names and content
in an MSDS a trade secret, they must apply for trade secret status to KOSHA through commissioned
manufacturers, and in this process, they must share all trade secrets with these commissioned
manufacturers.
This requirement will be revised to allow individuals to prepare and submit MSDS documents and apply for
non-disclosure reviews to resolve difficulties in the field, such as concerns over leakage of trade secrets, and
application delays (in December).
4)The redesignation procedures will be abolished for agencies that support elderly workers, including the
Talent Bank of the Aged and job centers for the middle-aged and older workers (in September).
These agencies have difficulties in terms of mid- and long-term human resource and physical investment
due to the annual redesignation procedures.
To ensure continuous business planning and operation of these agencies, designation periods will be
revised to “from the day of designation to until designation cancellation or business closure” to reduce
administrative burdens. Along with the redesignation abolishment, rules will be revised to allow for
designation cancellation in cases when the lowest grades have been received for three consecutive years
from evaluation, in order to support the improvement of the quality of their employment services.
2. Human-resource/physical entry requirements will be improved to guarantee easy access for the public
1)Human-resource establishment requirements will be improved to make it easy for job information
business operators to establish business associations. The Enforcement Decree of the Employment Security
Act requires no fewer than 30 promoters of the business operators to draft articles of association, and a
resolution must be reached by a majority of business operators who participate in an inaugural general
meeting attended by 30 or more business operators. This requirement will be revised as the “no fewer than
30 promoters” provision hinders the establishment of such associations.
2)Candidacy requirements for employee members of labor-management councils will be improved (in
November). The Enforcement Decree of the Act on the Promotion of Employee Participation and
Cooperation prescribes that anyone who intends to run for a position of employee member shall obtain
recommendations from ten or more employees from their company or workplace. Since this may restrict
employees’ autonomous decision for candidacy, related provisions will be revised.
3)Facility criteria among the requirements for designating safety and health checkup institutions will be
simplified (in December).
- Safety and health checkups refer to investigations and evaluations to identify potential risks and establish
countermeasures to prevent industrial accidents. The MOEL Minister may order business owners to
undertake checkups by designated institutions, and administrative fines of up to KRW 10 million may be
imposed for violations.
Safety and health checkup institutions are required to meet the requirements for human resources, facilities,
and equipment under the Enforcement Decree of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Considering that
these checkups are primarily performed by experts at establishments and that telework and shared offices
have been increasingly prevalent in office work, the requirement for possessing an “office” will be deleted
while maintaining the human-resource and equipment requirements related to checkup quality.
4)Eligibility criteria for job-seeking benefits of the self-employed, artists, and laborers will be improved so
that the occurrence of financial difficulties can be recognized more broadly in cases of disasters like COVID-
19 than they are in ordinary times (in December).
Since the current criteria for measuring income reduction for the self-employed are only based on the
previous year, it sometimes fails to take into account difficulties of self-employed individuals over longer
periods.