Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) — AI Framework Act supervisory authority

Ce qu'il fait

Administers the Framework Act on the Development of Artificial Intelligence and Establishment of Trust ('AI Framework Act'), in force 22 January 2026 — the world's second comprehensive national AI statute. This is a genuine regulator: it designates high-impact AI domains (energy, water, healthcare, medical devices, nuclear, biometric criminal analysis, employment and lending decisions, transport, government functions, student assessment), imposes transparency/labelling, lifecycle risk-management and human-oversight duties, and can levy administrative fines up to KRW 30 million (~USD 21,000). It also sets compute thresholds by Presidential Decree triggering additional safety obligations — the closest thing to a frontier-model trigger outside the EU.

Ses pouvoirs

fine

Évaluation franche

The compute-threshold provision means a foreign frontier lab can fall inside Korean law, which in turn means foreign parties genuinely have standing to raise issues — unusually for Asia. But the compliance route runs through a mandated Korean domestic representative and Korean-language administrative process. I could not verify a public-facing complaint form in English; MSIT's AI supervision channels appear to be Korean-only.

Notes

The fine ceiling (~USD 21k) is trivially small relative to EU AI Act penalties — treat this as a disclosure-and-registration regime with teeth mainly through market access, not through fines.