South Korea: Biotechnology and Other New Production Technologies Annual

In October 2025, President Trump and President Lee agreed that the Republic of Korea (ROK) would streamline the regulatory approval process for agricultural biotechnology products and resolve the backlog of U.S. applications. On December 2, 2025 the ROK National Assembly passed the revised Food Sanitation Act, which if signed by the President, will expand mandatory GE labeling to some food products with GE-derived ingredients but that do not contain detectable foreign DNA. The 2024 draft bill to introduce a policy defining organisms derived from genome editing technology that do not use or contain foreign genes in final products as a new category, distinct from Living Modified Organisms (LMOs) and thus not subject to the same requirements mandated for LMOs, including risk assessments, is still pending.