On November 23, 2022, South Korean Ministry of Environment (MoE) released 11 candidate substances subject to authorization for public consultation in its Announcement No. 2022-671. Comments can be made from December 15, 2022 to February 13, 2023 (lasting 60 days). Substances subject to authorization under K-REACH are required to obtain the authorization from MoE prior to production, import or use in South Korea, even if the substances have already completed registrations under K-REACH.

On October 20, 2022, South Korea made amendments to the guidelines on registration procedures for existing chemical substances. The guidelines provide specific pre-registration and registration procedures for substances that are identified as existing chemical substances under Article 3 of the Notice on Existing Chemical Substances (Notice No.2021-160) yet cannot be searched as existing chemical substances on the National Chemicals Information System (NCIS). The amendments mainly focused on the pre-registration and registration procedures of multi-component reactants.

On 1 August 2022, South Korea published the revised K-REACH implementation rules. The revised rules ease the exemption requirements for new chemical substances with an annual import volume of less than 0.1t/y for R&D purposes by exempting the specific name and CAS number of the chemical substances.

In January 2022, the RCEP Agreement entered into force, covering 10 ASEAN countries, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. After RCEP comes into effect, more than 90% of the trade of goods in the region will eventually achieve zero tariffs, which involves the chemical industry with more than 1,000 tariff numbers of RCEP origin rules, benefiting the import and export trade of chemicals. Within the RCEP coverage, most countries, including China, have adopted GHS classification and labelling systems, which requires the Safety Data Sheet (SDS) and labels of chemicals to comply with the GHS-related regulations and standards of each country and region.

Under the requirements of MOE Notification 2021-23, the scope of existing substances has been revised. Details are as follows: Hydrates or anhydrates of existing substances are all considered as existing substances; Reaction products composed of two or more components, and each component is an existing substance (these components are difficult to separate by technical means, and the reaction product itself is distributed or used in the market). Under this circumstance, the r

Korea MoE released the amended K-REACH regulation on 13 Apr. 2021, which will officially take effect on 14 Oct. 2021. The K-REACH regulation has been amended for 9 times since its implementation in 2015. With the improvements of the regulation, the supervision on chemicals in Korea has become stricter. The K-REACH regulation has been amended in the following parts this time: Raw materials for organic agricultural and fishery products under the Act on Promotion of Environment