- Korean's state-led economic development strategy, begun in the 1960s, yielded impressive results. Recently however, the opinion is spreading that excessive government regulations are hindering the market from effectively allocating resources and lowering Korean's competitiveness. Also, in a period of accelerating globalization, government regulations have emerged as a major cause of trade frictions, making the need for regulatory reform even more urgent.
- With these considerations in mind, the Korean Government began regulatory reform in earnest in the 1990s. In 1993, about 6,000 regulations were reformed by the Administrative Reform Committee, and in 1997, nearly 100 reform projects were selected and begun by the Regulatory Reform Promotion Committee. However, these reform efforts were mostly limited to resolving simple and minor inconveniences such as reducing the number of required documents.
- To address these limitations in regulatory reform, the government passed the Basic Law on Regulatory Reform in 1998, formed the Regulatory Reform Committee (with two chairpersons: the Prime Minister and a civilian Chairman), and began to intensively review existing regulations and screen regulations to be introduced or strengthened.
- Since its inauguration on Apr. 16, 1998, the Regulatory Reform Committee has played a critical role in government regulatory reform including review of regulation legislation and policy related to regulatory reform, focusing on civilian professionals with profound knowledge and experience on various areas.

- The Regulatory Reform Committee was established under the President to comprehensively enact regulatory reform tasks, including the discussion and adjustment of regulatory policy and the evaluation and reform of regulations. (Article 23 of Basic Law on Administrative Regulations, April 18, 1998)

- Determining basic direction of regulatory policy and research/development of regulatory systems.
- Evaluating new regulations and those to be strengthened.
- Evaluating existing regulations, drafting and executing comprehensive regulatory reform plan.
- Registering and publicizing regulations.
- Gathering and considering opinions on regulatory reform.
- Inspecting and evaluating actual regulatory reform progress at each administrative level.

- The committee is composed of 22 members including the Prime Minister(chairman), a chairman from the private sector, 14 civilian committee members, and 6 government members.