Regulations Hindering Innovative Growth to Be Revised Through Inter-Special Zone Cooperation

Ministry of SMEs and Startups Hosts '2024 Regulatory Sandbox Cooperation Network'

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups announced on the 17th that it held the '2024 Regulatory Free Zone Cooperation Network' event at the President Hotel in Seoul. This event was promoted to reorganize regulations that hinder regional innovative growth and to create opportunities for regional growth foundations through activities such as jointly discovering commercialization models and jointly responding to laws and regulations among similar zones, with participation from operators, local governments, and related organizations of the 33 currently operating regulatory free zones.

On the day, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups announced the '2024 Regulatory Free Zone Cooperation Network Promotion Plan.' Through this promotion plan, a promotion system between the Ministry, local governments, and zones was established to discover and promote cooperative projects, thereby enhancing the execution capabilities of the cooperation network. The promotion plan also includes measures to perform the role of regional growth foundations as well as regulatory reorganization through linkage and cooperation with support projects from other ministries.

On the same day, various events such as sharing best practices, specialized commercialization education, and investment IR were also held to support the achievement of results in the zones and cooperation among zones. Kim Hong-ju, head of the Regulatory Innovation Planning Group at the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, said, “For the regulatory free zones to abolish regulations that hinder regional innovative growth and to serve as a foundation for regional growth, cooperation among all zones as well as linkage and follow-up support with various policies of the Ministry and related ministries are most important.” He added, “Even after this event, we will strengthen cooperation among zones so that zone operators can continuously establish a foothold for growth, and we will focus policy capabilities on investment IR and commercialization support for zone operators.”