1 Jan. 2019, the recent hot topic amended “K-REACH” which refers to “Act on Registration and Evaluation of Chemicals of Korea officially took effect. Enterprises’ obligations under this Act would be changed tremendously. For instance, the amended K-REACH introduced pre-registration, which would affect the regulatory compliance work of related enterprises:
- All New substances which are not listed in the KECI(Korea Existing Chemical Inventory) must be registered prior the manufacture or import activity.
- All existing chemical substances >=1t/y must be registered within given grace periods.
To benefit from the grace periods for existing substances, manufacturers and importers are obliged to pre-register with Korea authority for all existing chemical substances >=1t/ybefore 30 Jun 2019. For chemicals that are not pre-registered before 30 Jun 2019 cannot enjoy the grace period benefit, thus will not be allowed to export to Korea from 1 July 2019.
The “K-REACH” was enforced back to Jan.1, year 2015. Since then the South Korea’s Ministry of Environment have made several times amendments and the final version is significantly changed from the previous version which officially took effect on 1 Jan 2019. Manufactures and importers shall pay attention to the new requirements of compliance, as well as the following registration deadlines:
| Substance tonnage type | Registration deadlines |
| PECs joint registration for 510 designated existing substances | 2018/6/30 |
| ≥1000t/a exist chemicals >1t CMR | 2021/12/31 |
| 100-1000t/a exist chemicals | 2024/12/31 |
| 10-100t/a exist chemicals | 2027/12/31 |
| 1-10t/a exist chemicals | 2030/12/31 |
