Korean citizens will soon be allowed to list their spare rooms at Airbnb or other accommodation sharing services, renting out their houses or rooms to visitors or tourists. Companies that develop brand new products, such as drones, wearable devices or unmanned vehicles, will soon be able to receive government support. Big improvements will be made to ease regulations that have prohibited the development of new industries based on the Internet of Things (IoT) or on 3-D printers.
These are all part of the government’s recently announced plans to focus on creating new engines of economic growth and to promote exports, deregulation and investment in new industries. The announcement was made at the ninth Trade and Investment Promotion Meeting that took place on Feb. 17.
President Park Geun-hye (center) announces the government’s improvements to its ‘negative regulation’ policies, part of new plans designed to lift all regulations, except for essential ones. She was speaking during the ninth Trade and Investment Promotion Meeting on Feb. 17 at Cheong Wa Dae.
One of the most noticeable measures of the government’s efforts to boost investment is its support for the sharing economy. The sharing economy includes people who share their own goods or services with others, instead of running a traditional business, such as Airbnb or Uber. In Korea, it had been illegal to offer rooms in one’s home as vacation rentals without registering as a formal accommodation business. For this reason, the government will make a new “sharing accommodation” category in the law so that individuals can run accommodation services in their own residences. Related regulations, in this regard, will be lifted as early as the second half of this year, starting in Busan, Gangwon-do Province and Jejudo Island.
The government also announced its strategies to foster new industries in order to bolster exports. It will focus on supporting five promising export items, including cosmetics and pharmaceutical goods. It will also inject a total of KRW 44 trillion into those five sectors, including new energies, new materials, bio health, and the use of IT in manufacturing, over the next three years.
The government will improve regulations covering newly introduced products, such as drones, wearable devices, unmanned vehicles and 3-D printers, as these products have up until now been used relatively less in Korea compared to their use in other countries. The government will concentrate on supporting a total of 81 firms in the five new industries, covering 113 related projects, so that these items can become main export items in the long term.
The meeting also involved measures to vitalize healthcare management services, which are designed to provide lifestyle improvement programs, consultations, education and training sessions in order to prevent people from catching diseases such as diabetes or hypertension. Considering Korea’s technological strengths and its use of healthcare and big data, the government will help the healthcare industry develop by encouraging the combination of IT and wearable devices so that these can become new engines of economic growth. To this aim, it will set up guidelines to define the fine line between medical services and healthcare services in order to avoid any conflict of interest between the medical and IT sectors. It will also come up with new criteria to set up price ranges for newly developed pharmaceutical goods for export in order to support domestic pharmaceutical firms.
President Park Geun-hye (second from right) asks for government ministries to work together in order to remove unnecessary regulations and to solve difficulties faced by businesses. She was speaking at the ninth Trade and Investment Promotion Meeting.
President Park Geun-hye said during the meeting that, “In a lingering situation of low growth in the world economy, Korea needs to improve its economic fundamentals in order to vitalize domestic consumption and to endure the times of low export performance.”
“The government will keep its word by lifting all regulations and removing difficulties that prohibit the development of new industries,” said the president, expressing her administration’s will to improve regulations.
By Yoon Sojung
Korea.net Staff Writer
Photos: Cheong Wa Dae
arete@korea.kr
