President Moon Jae-in has emphasized deregulation as a way to boost his innovative growth initiative. 

Speaking at an event in Seoul to discuss innovative growth on Thursday, Moon said drastic deregulation is needed. 

The president in particular said the government, the ruling party and the presidential office should make more efforts to pass a revised bill on the regulatory sandbox, which will allow businesses to test their innovative business ideas without regulation for a certain period of time. 

Moon said that innovative reform should be led by the private sector, but the government’s role to facilitate it also shouldn’t be ignored, adding it is necessary to encourage public agencies to make greater use of innovative products.  

He said although the government is already giving priority to innovate products from startups in the public procurement bidding process, such efforts need to expand more and it should find more public demand for such products.