President Lee Jae-myung asked the Ministry of Employment and Labor and both labor and management to explore alternatives to new legislation in a dispute over exempting advanced semiconductor research and development staff from South Korea's 52-hour workweek cap, a carve-out known as a white-collar exemption. "Discuss whether this can be resolved in other ways, such as revising the presidential decree of the existing system or making procedures easier," he said.
Lee made the remarks on the 23rd while taking up the agenda item on flexible working hours for semiconductor R&D at the second plenary meeting of the Regulatory Rationalization Committee, held at the presidential office in Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul. The suggestion of an administrative workaround came after the Korea Semiconductor Industry Association complained about the burden of administrative steps such as obtaining prior approval for special extended work hours and called for the exemption to be written into law.
"Is it really necessary to create by law a new system that labor opposes so fiercely, on the grounds that procedures are complicated and prior approval is required?" Lee said. "If the labor ministry grants prior approval on a comprehensive basis or processes requests quickly, the institutional inconvenience can be sufficiently addressed."
The government also unveiled plans the same day to streamline rules covering semiconductors, artificial intelligence data centers, robots, biotechnology and self-driving cars. Permits, compensation and design work for national semiconductor industrial complexes will be handled in parallel, cutting the time from site development to factory operation to within five years from more than 10 years. The government will also set up a one-stop permit system for AI data centers and review criteria for exempting projects outside the greater Seoul area from power grid impact assessments.
In robotics, machines meeting safety standards will be allowed to operate without fences, and rules for outdoor operation of four-legged walking robots will be revised. In biotechnology, the government will widen the channels for sourcing cells used as raw material in regenerative medicine and establish review standards for AI-developed drugs. For driverless vehicles, it will introduce a performance certification scheme for business-to-business sales and push to establish a regulatory framework for Level 4 autonomous driving services.
The government is also pursuing legislation on mega-regional special zones containing some 320 regulatory exceptions, with plans to designate at least one zone in each region in the first half of next year.