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Organization :
Ministry of Food and Drug Safety
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Regulation :
Pre-announcement of Partial Amendment Proposal to Enforcement Rule of the Cosmetics Act (Apr 3, 2015
Grievance
- According to the Partial Amendment Proposal to Enforcement Rule of the Cosmetics Act pre-announced on Apr 3, 2015, placement of advertisement during the suspension period for advertisement will be subject to suspension of sales from three months to 12 months.
- It is too stringent to suspend the sale of all products in addition to the concerned product of the company that unintentionally violated the advertisement regulation by a simple mistake. As for the medical products, the related laws only suspend the sale of the concerned product, so it can be said that this regulation is too discriminatory and excessive compared to other product groups.
- In particular, cosmetics product information pages of foreign-invested companies are often managed by the parent companies overseas and they display simple Korean translation of the product information. While such pages are accepted as product information in other countries, they are interpreted as advertisement in Korea leading to unintended violation of the law.
Resoultion and Results
- The Office of Foreign Investment Ombudsman (OFIO) took the issue as the agenda item for the FIAC meeting in the first half of 2015 and officially requested the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) to review the matter for resolution.
- MFDS did not accept the request on the grounds that the level of its regulation is weaker than that of other ministry’s regulations and the effectiveness of the disposition must be secured. Therefore, OFIO requested the Regulatory Reform Committee to review this issue during regulatory examination.
- The 527th Meeting of Administrative and Social Subcommittee of the Regulatory Reform Committee has prepared legal grounds for the administrative disposition on the case for “placement of advertisement during the suspension period for advertisement” and complemented the said regulation such as by adding provisions for the prevention of “well-intentioned” violators. As for the amendment proposal pre-announced on Apr 3, the related provision has been deleted in the amended Enforcement Rule enforced on July 29, 2015.
