In force
AI Basic Act
Framework Act on the Development of Artificial Intelligence and the Creation of a Foundation for Trust (Act No. 20676)
Key dates
- Introduced
- n/a
- Signed or adopted
- Jan 21, 2025
- Effective
- Jan 22, 2026
- Next step · in 75 days
- January 22, 2027
End of the one year grace period on administrative fines indicated by the Ministry of Science and ICT (policy, not statute)
Scope
SI business operators serving Korea, including foreign firms; safety duties apply to systems above a training compute threshold set by decree, reported as 10^26 FLOP.
Penalties
Administrative fines of up to 30 million won for failing to give notice, appoint a domestic agent or obey corrective orders.
What it requires
- High-compute systems: identify, assess and mitigate risks across the lifecycle and report results to the Minister of Science and ICT
- High-impact SI: pre-deployment self-review, risk management, explanation and user protection plans, and human oversight
- Notify users in advance when a product uses generative or high-impact SI, and label generated outputs
- Clearly mark realistic synthetic audio, images and video
- Foreign operators above revenue or user thresholds appoint a domestic agent
Sources
- Framework Act on the Development of Artificial Intelligence and the Creation of a Foundation for Trust Korea Ministry of Government Legislation
- South Korea's AI Basic Act: Overview and Key Takeaways Cooley · Jan 27, 2026