Seoul City Accelerates Deregulation... Removes Age Limit for Foreigners' Childcare Fee Support

Announcement of 10 New Regulatory Abolition Plans
Clarifying the Scope of District-Level Building Reviews and More

Seoul City will abolish 10 regulations in response to citizens' ongoing complaints. The age limit for childcare fee support for foreign children will be removed, and the scope of district-level building reviews will be clearly defined.

The city announced on the 16th that it conducted a comprehensive survey of citizen inconvenience complaints raised over the past three years and selected and announced 10 additional regulatory abolition plans. These regulatory abolition plans were accepted by each department based on recommendations from the 'Construction Industry Regulatory Abolition TF,' which has been operating since December last year, and the 'Regulatory Abolition Expert Review Committee' held on the 14th.

First, Regulatory Abolition Plan No. 23 is the 'Improvement of the Unreasonable Building Review System.' Ambiguous phrases in the ordinance will be revised to prevent arbitrary expansion of the building review scope. Currently, the ordinance states "matters deemed necessary for committee consultation and submitted to the meeting," which has led to districts arbitrarily expanding the review scope, causing inconvenience to citizens. Seoul City Council member Ko Gwang-min of the People Power Party has proposed an amendment to the Seoul Metropolitan Building Ordinance.

Submission documents related to construction supervision will also be simplified. There have been cases where districts requested additional documents without legal grounds when submitting construction supervision reports. The city has issued official letters to districts to prevent such cases.

Regulatory Abolition Plan No. 26 removes the age limit for childcare fee support for foreign children. Until now, foreign children only received 50% childcare fee support for ages 3 to 5 attending daycare centers, unlike Korean children. Starting January this year, the support target has been expanded to all foreign children aged 0 to 5. Foreign children attending daycare centers in the city can receive support regardless of their parents' income, even if they do not reside in Seoul.

Application documents for transportation expenses for foreign pregnant women from multicultural families will also be simplified. Previously, a 'Certificate of Alien Registration' was required to verify the six-month residency requirement, but now support can be received by submitting only a pregnancy confirmation and a resident registration certificate.

Regulatory Abolition Plan No. 28 relaxes the facility requirements for vehicle entrance and exit installations. The paving installation standards for pedestrian crossing vehicle entrances installed on sidewalks when vehicles enter residential or building parking lots will be improved. Previously, different materials had to be used for flat and sloped sections, but from now on, all will use attached mortar, reducing maintenance and repair costs.

Regulatory abolition efforts will also be promoted to reduce uncertain administrative processing. Regulatory Abolition Plan No. 29 clarifies the targets for administrative property use permits under negotiated contracts. The city plans to comprehensively review cases where properties installed with permits were difficult to handle through general bidding and were unnecessarily processed through general bidding despite being eligible for negotiated contracts, causing delays due to unnecessary administrative document submissions. By amending the ordinance to establish grounds and clarifying the targets for negotiated contract permits, administrative procedures are expected to be simplified.

Additionally, restrictions on contract amounts per work order for unit price contract water supply construction will be relaxed, and standards for design changes in unit price contract waterworks construction will be eased. Inefficient review procedures of city committees will be improved, and the Seoul Design Foundation's private contract document procedures will also be simplified.

A city official stated, "We will continuously discover and prepare improvement plans for regulations closely related to daily life so that Seoul citizens can feel and empathize with the changes, thereby accelerating regulatory abolition. At the same time, we will closely examine whether the tasks are properly executed and systematically check the implementation process."