Driving Innovation in Ocean and Fisheries by Boldly Breaking Regulatory Barriers from Consumers’ Perspective

 

MOF announces the 2025 Ocean and Fisheries Regulatory Innovation Implementation Plan

 

 The Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries (MOF; Minister Kang Do-hyung) disclosed that it has prepared the 2025 Ocean and Fisheries Regulatory Innovation Implementation Plan based on the vision of “Revitalizing the ocean and fisheries economy and enhancing people’s livelihood.”

 

 MOF has been establishing and implementing a regulatory innovation plan every year to improve unreasonable regulations that burden the public and stifle economic vitality. For the 2025 Ocean and Fisheries Regulatory Innovation Implementation Plan, the Ministry collected a wide range of voices from the field through on-site visits, industry/group meetings, etc. to realize regulatory innovation from the perspective of the public and specified detailed tasks through the Regulatory Innovation Committee.

 

 This Implementation Plan presents three strategies: ▲regulatory innovation to address current issues, ▲regulatory reorganization in three key areas*, and ▲strengthening of foundation for promoting regulatory innovation, focusing on tasks with large ripple effect and those with high public awareness.

 

 * Strengthening economic dynamism, improving people's livelihood, and strengthening the regulatory innovation system

 

 First, MOF will execute tasks to respond to current issues by reflecting on the policy environment in 2025.

 

 MOF will introduce the Fishing Village Development Special Zones to revitalize fishing villages and coastal areas and ease barriers to private investment by allowing private convenience facilities within fishing port facilities. In addition, it will raise the unit price for calculating recovery expenses to make natural disaster recovery costs more realistic and improve the system to allow inland aquaculture farmers to receive direct payment support.

 

 The Ministry will also implement regulatory rationalization to improve fishing vessel safety. It will make the wearing of life jackets at all times mandatory, with the fishing vessels subject to stability inspections to be expanded from vessels 24 meters or longer to those 12 meters or longer.

 

 Furthermore, regulations will be rationalized to ensure sustainable fisheries resource management in response to climate change. Existing unreasonable regulations on fishing seasons and methods will be eased to increase the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) gradually. In particular, out of the 1,529 regulations related to fishing, 740—or about half of the total—excluding those related to fishing vessel safety and fishery resource protection will be gradually abolished by 2027. The Ministry will introduce the Climate Change Recovery Zone to enhance disaster resilience, allowing measures such as species conversion and license transfer to disaster-prone areas and Metropolitan License Transfer System across city, country, and district boundaries.

 

 Second, MOF will reorganize the regulation to focus on three key government priority areas.

 

 Data centers will be classified as port facilities to realize high value-added smart ports and vertiports with urban air mobility hubs to be permitted within ports, driving regulatory innovation in emerging industries to strengthen connectivity between cities and ports.

 

 Furthermore, the pollution response contributions for newly built tankers during trial operations will be reduced from KRW 2.74 to 1.41 per ton, and the burden on ocean and fisheries businesses will be eased by allowing negotiated contracts for temporary entry into maritime industry clusters for technology verification using regulatory exceptions to support corporate R&D.

 

 Additionally, unnecessary and redundant temporary inspection items for fishing boats will be deleted to resolve the inconvenience for fishermen, and installation of overhead power lines in wetland protection areas will be permitted if certain conditions are met to improve living conditions in island areas.

 

 Third, MOF will strengthen the foundation for implementing regulatory innovation.

 

 The Ministry plans to conduct a comprehensive review of regulations to examine thoroughly the necessity of maintaining approximately 7,000 registered regulations and improve outdated or obsolete legal provisions. It plans to overhaul all registered regulations systematically.

 

 Moreover, MOF will form and operate the Regulatory Innovation Council in coordination with the Office of Government Policy Coordination and other related ministries to improve regulations that involve multiple ministries and laws or give rise to conflicting interests among stakeholders, and to hold a Marine and Fisheries Regulatory Innovation Competition and an Affiliated Organization Competition to reorganize unreasonable regulations in the field aggressively.

 

 “We expect this initiative to revitalize people’s livelihoods and the economy by eliminating unnecessary or excessive outdated regulations. We will continue actively promoting regulatory innovation in the oceans and fisheries industry, gathering real voices from the field through on-site visits and meetings," Minister Kang Do-hyung said.