Cabinet passes bills on Korea-EU free trade safeguards

The Cabinet on Tuesday passed a package of safeguard bills aimed at protecting local industries from cheap imports after a free trade deal with the European Union (EU) takes effect in July.
The free trade pact, approved by the parliament in April, will eliminate 98 percent of import duties and other trade barriers on manufactured goods, agricultural products and services between South Korea and the EU within the next five years.
The safeguard bills already passed the National Assembly last week.
In a weekly meeting, the Cabinet passed a revision bill strengthening regulations on retail giants, known as "super supermarkets" (SSMs), to prohibit conglomerate-run supermarkets from opening in areas within a 1-kilometer radius of traditional markets, doubling the current cap of a 500-meter radius.
A safeguard arrangement bill allows the nation to temporarily raise duties if there is a sufficient surge in imports of agriculture products that can hurt local businesses.
Another bill outlines a plan to open the local accounting market in a gradual manner, instead of opening it all at once. The new copyright law extends the maximum duration of protection from the current 50 years to 70 years.
The Cabinet also approved a revised enforcement ordinance to the national health insurance law, making top-level personal income owners pay more monthly insurance premiums and patients using large-scale general hospitals pay more for medicine.
Also endorsed was an enforcement ordinance to a law on the management and research of umbilical cord blood as the law is set to come into force on Friday.
The cord blood law allows doctors to treat incurable diseases using hematopoietic stem cells from cord blood.
The enforcement ordinance contains detailed guidelines for extracting cord blood and the proper requirements for cord blood banks.