Government to scrap controversial laws and regulations

An official clears President Yoon Suk-yeol\'s seat after it was announced that he will not be attending the \

The government decided to abolish the Mobile Device Distribution Improvement Act and the regulation mandating closure twice a month for large retail stores on January 22. It has also decided to exclude web content from the application of the fixed book price system and allow small bookstores to set discount rates flexibly. However, it is unlikely to be realized in the 21st National Assembly, as the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), which is also the majority party of the National Assembly, expressed its negative stance on the revision of these laws.

The Office for Government Policy Coordination said it discussed measures to reform regulations applied to people’s daily lives at a public discussion held in Seoul on the same day.

The government decided to abolish the Mobile Device Distribution Improvement Act to lower the burden of telecommunications costs on the people. The law was enacted by the government in October 2014 to stabilize and improve the mobile phone distribution market. However, there have been complaints from consumers that the law has prevented mobile carriers from competing for subsidies, leading to higher mobile phone prices.

The government said it would "promote market competition and reduce purchase price of mobile phones by lifting the disclosure requirement of subsidies and the upper limit of additional subsidies." However, it explained that the optional contract discount system, which provides telecommunication cost reduction benefits to consumers who do not receive subsidies, will be transferred to the Telecommunications Business Act to continue the benefits.

The government also decided to abolish the regulation of designating mandatory closing days for supermarkets as public holidays, allowing them to close on weekdays. In addition to big cities and the metropolitan area, it will allow online delivery services outside business hours of large retail stores so that the early morning delivery service is activated in other parts of the country.

Since 2012, supermarkets have been restricted from operating from midnight to 10:00 a.m. under the Distribution Industry Development Act, and two of the public holidays have been designated as mandatory holidays every month. The government said, "It was originally introduced to protect local businesses, but the competitive structure of the distribution market has changed from large discount stores and local businesses to offline and online, and public inconvenience is increasing, especially for dual-income couples and single-person households who have difficulty shopping on weekdays."

President Yoon Suk-yeol attended a meeting of senior secretaries and said, "Even before the abolition of the Mobile Device Distribution Improvement Act, we should come up with measures to substantially reduce the price of mobile phones by boosting marketing competition among mobile operators," according to Kim Soo-kyung, a spokesperson for the presidential office, in a written briefing.

Lee Kae-ho, chairman of the DPK’s policy committee, said in a phone interview, "It is not desirable that the government recklessly announces policies that should be carefully reviewed ahead of the general election in April."

※This article has undergone review by a professional translator after being translated by an AI translation tool.