South Korea to ease registration thresholds for new chemicals under K-REACH

On January 9, 2024, the South Korean government announced that the proposed amendments to the Act on Registration, Evaluation, etc. of Chemicals (hereinafter "K-REACH") and the Chemicals Control Act (hereinafter "CCA") have passed the review in the plenary session of the National Assembly. Following his inauguration, President Yoon stated that his administration would ease regulations on chemical substances. The main regulatory changes made by these amendments are to ease the registration threshold for new chemical substances from the current 0.1 tons per year to 1 ton per year, and to apply different rules to different chemical substances according to the toxicity and hazard level of each substance.

The outline of the proposed amendments are as follows.