South Korea: Agricultural Biotechnology Annual

Korea is in the process of revising its existing Living Modified Organism (LMO) Act to cover products of innovative biotechnologies, including genome edited products. The draft revision announced in May 2021 includes a pre-review process that will determine if certain products of innovative biotechnologies require a full risk assessment or can be exempt from evaluation. Despite objections from local non-governmental organizations (NGOs), Korea plans to complete its LMO revision process by the end of 2021. In April 2021, Korea identified 10 companies to promote green-bio convergence and invested 2.8 billion Korean won to support this initiative. Items developed by the selected companies include agricultural varieties that utilize genome editing technologies.