16,743 Existing Substances Pre-registered under K-REACH

171,932 pre-registration applications were submitted for 16,743 chemical substances. 11% of the pre-registered substances are over 1,000 t/y. Designated CMR substances with a volume over 1 t/y and the general existing substances over 1,000 t/y should be registered as a priority by 2021.

South Korea’s pre-registration of existing chemical substances manufactured or imported over 1 ton per year ended on Jun 30th, 2019. The Ministry of Environment (MoE) recently released a summary of the pre-registered substances^[1]. The data was collected by Jul 19th, 2019 when the direct supplementation or update of the submitted information ended (CL news^[2]).

As disclosed a total of 171,932 pre-registration applications were submitted for 16,743 chemical substances, accounting for more than 37% of the existing chemicals circulated in South Korea.

For each pre-registered substance, the MoE provided the below information.

the number of pre-registration applications;
the maximum tonnage band (see chart 1);
if it is a CMR;
does any consumer use apply (no data reduction for consumer use);
Hazards information.

Chart 1. Number of pre-registered substances corresponding to different tonnage bands

Pre-registered substances are granted a grace period to manufacture/import chemicals before the corresponding phase-in registration deadline. Relevant enterprises are advised to join the CICO platform (a SIEF-like platform) as soon as possible to smooth formation and operation of consortiums during joint registration (CL news^[3]).

Corresponding registration deadlines are set as below:

>1000 t/y; or designated 364 CMRs^[4]above 1 t/y: by 31 Dec 2021
100-1000 t/y: by 31 Dec 2024
10-100 t/y: by 31 Dec 2027
1-10 t/y: by 31 Dec 2030