By Kim Hwaya

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy on Sept. 18 implemented a revised system for export control that removes Japan from the nation's "whitelist" of preferential trading partners.

Lee Ho-hyeon, the ministry's director general for international trade policy, said in a news conference the day before, "We pushed for the revision to reinforce the export control system by subdividing categories for export regions and putting a country having difficulties in international cooperation into a new category."

He also denied that the move was a tit-for-tat response to Japan's export restrictions imposed on Korea in July.

Japan was thus downgraded from Category A of the whitelist to the new Category A-2, whose member nations receive the same treatment as those in Category B, which has non-whitelist countries.

This action requires domestic companies shipping strategic goods to Japan to get individual instead of blanket approval for 1,138 non-sensitive strategic items. The expiration period for blanket approval was also shortened from three years to two, and the time allotted for the approval process was also extended from within five days to 15.

fayastory@korea.kr