Executive summary

Korea has established institutions, processes and tools to support good regulatory practices since the late 1990s. The 2015 OECD Indicators of Regulatory Policy and Governance (iREG) show that Korea has performed slightly above the OECD average on regulatory impact assessment (RIA), stakeholder engagement and ex post evaluation. There is still room for improvement including on the quality of these practices and by extending these practices to the entire regulatory system. The percentage of primary laws initiated by the National Assembly, Korea’s unicameral parliament, increased from 38.5% in 2000 to 75% in 2007, and reached 86% in 2016. Most of these bills lack regulatory quality scrutiny or review. The improvements recommended in this review would allow Korea to reap the full benefits of the reforms implemented so far and make the regulatory system more strategic, targeted, proactive and inclusive.