Practical requirements extracted from policy instruments, with the source article, the actors they bind, evidence examples and original framework mappings. Legal requirements are marked; everything else is voluntary guidance.
An AI business operator without an address or place of business in Korea, whose user numbers or revenue meet the thresholds set by Presidential Decree, must designate in writing a domestic representative with an address in Korea. The representative handles the operator's duties under the Act, including submitting the Article 32 safety results, supporting high-impact AI confirmation and cooperating with fact-finding investigations, and the operator is treated as responsible for the representative's acts.
Verified (a factual check against the official source, not a legal review)Applies from 22 Jan 2026
Legal requirementGovernance and accountability·South Korea
Operators of high-impact AI must prepare and implement a plan to protect users, and must prepare and keep documents describing the measures they take to secure the AI's safety and reliability, so that they can be shown to the Ministry of Science and ICT on request. Further items may be added by Presidential Decree, and the ministry may publish guidelines on how to meet these duties.
Verified (a factual check against the official source, not a legal review)Applies from 22 Jan 2026
Operators of high-impact AI must ensure that the AI is subject to human management and supervision, so that people remain able to monitor its operation and intervene in or override its outputs where those outputs may affect life, physical safety or fundamental rights.
Verified (a factual check against the official source, not a legal review)Applies from 22 Jan 2026
An AI business operator that provides high-impact AI, or a product or service using it, must establish and operate a plan for managing the risks of that AI. High-impact AI is AI used in areas such as energy, drinking water, health care and medical devices, nuclear safety, biometric analysis for criminal investigation, decisions on recruitment or loans, transport, public services and education, where it may materially affect life, safety or fundamental rights.
Verified (a factual check against the official source, not a legal review)Applies from 22 Jan 2026
Legal requirementSafety testing and evaluation·South Korea
An AI business operator whose AI system's cumulative training computation exceeds the threshold set by Presidential Decree must identify, assess and mitigate risks across the system's life cycle, build a risk management system to monitor and respond to safety incidents caused by the AI, and submit the results of these measures to the Minister of Science and ICT. The threshold and reporting form are set in the Decree.
Verified (a factual check against the official source, not a legal review)Applies from 22 Jan 2026
Legal requirementTransparency and disclosure·South Korea
An AI business operator that provides generative AI or a product or service using it must indicate that the output was generated by generative AI. Where the operator provides content such as virtual sound, images or video that is hard to distinguish from reality, it must clearly notify users that the content is AI-generated, in a manner that does not impair a work's artistic or creative expression where that applies. Detailed methods are left to Presidential Decree and ministry guidance.
Verified (a factual check against the official source, not a legal review)Applies from 22 Jan 2026
Legal requirementTransparency and disclosure·South Korea
An AI business operator that provides a product or service operated by high-impact AI or by generative AI must notify users in advance that the product or service is based on such AI. The notice is owed before use and is the entry point of the Act's transparency chapter; failure to give it can attract an administrative fine after a corrective order.
Verified (a factual check against the official source, not a legal review)Applies from 22 Jan 2026
Legal requirementTransparency and disclosure·South Korea
Operators of high-impact AI must put in place measures to explain the AI's final results, the main criteria used to reach them, and an overview of the training data, to the extent that this is technically feasible. The duty targets explainability of the system's decisions to users and affected people rather than full disclosure of the model.
Verified (a factual check against the official source, not a legal review)Applies from 22 Jan 2026
An AI business operator that provides high-impact AI, or a product or service using it, is to make efforts to assess in advance the impact the AI may have on people's fundamental rights. The provision is drafted as an endeavour duty rather than a hard requirement, but public bodies procuring high-impact AI are directed to give preference to products that have undergone such an assessment, and the ministry may set assessment methods.
Verified (a factual check against the official source, not a legal review)Applies from 22 Jan 2026
A single practical requirement pulled out of an instrument and stated on its own: keep a risk management system, log incidents, document training data, provide human oversight, and so on. Each one cites the article or section it comes from so you can check it against the source.
Does a voluntary obligation have legal force?
No, and every obligation is labelled either a legal requirement or voluntary guidance. Voluntary items still matter in practice, because procurement questionnaires and auditors ask about them, but only the binding ones carry legal consequence.
How do I find the obligations that apply to my organisation?
Filter by jurisdiction, category, actor, sector or use case. The applicability check asks a short set of questions and returns the duties that may reach you. It is an educational screen, not a legal determination, and it says so.
Why do some instruments have no obligations listed?
Because nobody has broken them out yet. Most instruments are recorded at summary level first; obligations are added jurisdiction by jurisdiction. The coverage and open-gaps pages publish exactly what is missing rather than hiding it.
