The Complete Guide to Using AI in the Government Industry in South Korea in 2025

South Korea's new Basic Act on AI, promulgated January 21, 2025 and taking effect January 22, 2026, reshapes how government agencies and vendors must use AI: a risk‑based law that targets “high‑impact” systems (health, energy, public decisions), forces transparency and labeling for generative AI, reaches extraterritorially, and pairs oversight with public support for AI data centers and standards - so procurement, compliance, and talent plans all matter.

Expect oversight from the Ministry of Science and ICT, coordination (and occasional tension) with the Personal Information Protection Commission, mandatory impact checks for powerful models, and administrative fines up to KRW 30 million for key breaches.

For teams preparing to operationalize these rules, CSET's translation and analysis of the AI Basic Act is a clear reference, and practical upskilling - like Nucamp's AI Essentials for Work bootcamp - helps staff learn promptcraft, risk assessments, and transparency practices.

CSET translation and analysis of the South Korea AI Basic Act (2025), Nucamp AI Essentials for Work bootcamp syllabus (15-week program).

What is the new AI law in South Korea? At a glance, the AI Basic Act (promulgated January 21, 2025; effective January 22, 2026) is a risk‑based, economy‑wide framework that balances promotion of AI infrastructure with clear guardrails for “high‑impact” systems and generative models: think mandatory transparency and labeling for GenAI outputs, lifecycle risk management and explainability for systems that affect health, energy, public services or individual rights, plus impact assessments that can unlock procurement priority for compliant vendors.

The law reaches beyond Korea's borders (exterritorial application), forces foreign providers meeting thresholds to appoint a local representative, and vests investigatory and enforcement authority with the Ministry of Science and ICT - including administrative fines capped at KRW 30 million (≈ USD 21,000).

Operators should be ready to run high‑impact checks, maintain human oversight and documentation, and pivot quickly when MSIT issues implementing decrees; for a detailed walk‑through see Securiti's overview of the AI Basic Act and Debevoise's business‑focused analysis.

the electronic embodiment of human intellectual abilities, including learning, reasoning, perception, judgment, and language understanding.

South Korea's national playbook pairs a bold industrial mission with hands‑on public programs: the Presidential National Artificial Intelligence Committee and MSIT's “realize trustworthy artificial intelligence for everyone” strategy steer four flagship projects - massive expansion of AI computing infrastructure, big private investment mobilization, an “AI+X” push to digitize industry and the public sector, and new safety institutions - with concrete measures like a national AI computing center (KRW 2 trillion scale) and plans to expand GPU performance more than 15× by 2030 to power large models and public services; the Framework Act layers these incentives with legal guardrails (including government support for AI data centers and training‑data projects) so vendors can both access subsidized infrastructure and expect clearer procurement signals for compliant, impact‑assessed systems.

For teams planning roadmaps, MSIT's human‑centered strategy and the Foundation‑for‑Trustworthiness analysis help map out targets (70% industry adoption, 95% public sector by 2030), workforce goals (200,000 AI experts by 2030), and the practical nexus of promotion and regulation described in policy summaries of the AI Framework Act and national strategy.

Explore MSIT's strategy and an accessible Framework Act overview to align procurement, talent, and data investments with Korea's national programs: MSIT Strategy to Realize Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (English), Future of Privacy Forum analysis: South Korea's New AI Framework Act.

Korea now stands at a great historical turning point - whether we become mere followers exposed to the risk of falling behind, or pioneers who seize boundless opportunities,” the president said. “If we move boldly forward and lead the future, artificial intelligence will serve as the key to advancing the structure of our industries, improving the quality of life for our people and ushering Korea into a new era of prosperity.

Expect 2025 to be the year of rule‑making and runway work: after the AI Basic Act was promulgated in January 2025, agencies entered a one‑year transition that crescendos toward enforcement on January 22, 2026, so the first half of 2025 will be dominated by Presidential Decrees, MSIT guidance and sectoral rules that lock in thresholds for “high‑impact” systems, computational capacity triggers, and domestic‑representative criteria; the government has signaled an expedited timetable for lower statutes and implementation details, and regulatory interventions already surfaced in early 2025 (for example, a temporary suspension of new downloads of the Deepseek app in February).

Teams operating or procuring AI should watch three near‑term checkpoints closely - Presidential Decree clarifications, MSIT enforcement guidance, and revisions to the domestic representative regime (changes slated in 2025 may include sanctions for non‑compliance) - because those decisions will define who needs impact assessments, what gets labeled as generative AI, and which systems must run lifecycle risk management.

For official timing and next steps see MSIT's announcement on the Basic Act and practical analysis from the Future of Privacy Forum and CSET's translation of the law for clause‑by‑clause detail: MSIT AI Basic Act announcement, Future of Privacy Forum analysis of South Korea's AI Framework Act, CSET clause-by-clause translation of the AI Basic Act.

"We consider the passage of the Basic Act on Artificial Intelligence in the National Assembly to be highly significant as it will lay the foundation for strengthening the country's AI competitiveness."

Key legal obligations for AI operators in South Korea focus on transparency, lifecycle safety and clear accountability: providers must notify users when a service uses AI and label generative outputs (especially synthetic audio, images or video that are difficult to distinguish from reality), implement lifecycle risk‑management and submit safety‑measure results when training compute exceeds thresholds, and run a preliminary review to confirm whether a system qualifies as “high‑impact” (with MSIT confirmation available) - high‑impact operators then must document risk management plans, explanation measures, user‑protection steps, human oversight and retain supporting records while making efforts to assess impacts on fundamental rights; foreign providers meeting revenue/user thresholds must appoint a domestic representative to receive MSIT notices and support compliance, and MSIT can investigate and issue corrective orders with administrative fines up to KRW 30 million for breaches.

These duties are both compliance tasks and procurement levers - agencies are encouraged to prioritize products that completed impact assessments - so teams should map systems to Article 31–36 requirements now and use practical guides like the Future of Privacy Forum's overview and OneTrust's preparedness checklist to operationalize labeling, impact reviews and governance.

Future of Privacy Forum analysis of South Korea AI Framework Act, OneTrust guide: preparing for South Korea's AI law, Securiti summary of South Korea's Basic Act on AI.

the electronic embodiment of human intellectual abilities, including learning, reasoning, perception, judgment, and language understanding.

Data protection in Korea now sits at the heart of any AI rollout: the amended Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) expanded data‑subject rights (data portability and the right to refuse or seek explanations for fully automated decisions) and tightened overseas transfer, breach reporting and local‑agent rules, so government teams must treat privacy as a design constraint, not an afterthought.

Expect the Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) to publish detailed enforcement guidance (including a May 24, 2024 draft “Guide on Data Subjects' Rights Regarding Automated Decisions”) that clarifies when an AI decision “substantially impacts” rights and what explanations controllers must give; foreign providers should follow the PIPC's scenario‑based guidance for cross‑border applicability and consider naming a domestic representative to receive notices.

Practically, that means logging datasets and model uses for PIA checks, disclosing automated‑decision criteria where required, and hardening contracts for overseas processing - areas the PIPC, Kim & Chang and practitioners have emphasized in recent guidance.

For busy procurement and compliance teams, the key takeaway is simple and vivid: an unseen model can no longer quietly change someone's benefits or access - Korea's rules demand notice, an explanation or even a stop button.

Read the official PIPC notices on PIPA and AI guidance, the Kim & Chang draft guide on automated decisions, and the GRC summary for foreign businesses to align policies and contracts now: PIPC guidance on Korea's Personal Information Protection Act and AI compliance, Kim & Chang draft guide on automated decisions (May 24, 2024), GRC Report: data protection compliance guidelines for foreign companies in South Korea.

In today's digital landscape, online services are reaching users in all corners of the world almost instantly. Our data protection law aims to ensure that domestic and foreign companies play by the same rules. Through this new guideline, we anticipate that foreign businesses will gain a deeper understanding of the legal requirements of the PIPA and enhance their compliance, ultimately contributing to the protection of data privacy of Korean data subjects.

Generative AI has become a lightning rod in Korea's legal landscape: the AI Basic Act and related agency guidance force clear notice and labeling of AI outputs, but the real pressure point is training data and copyright - domestic broadcasters have already sued NAVER over using news articles to train models, signaling that publishers will litigate hard when content is reused without permission (see Chambers' country review on AI litigation and IP).

Courts so far refuse to recognize AI as an author or inventor, leaving creators and platforms to square copyright, authorship and fair‑use questions under existing law, while antitrust and consumer‑protection authorities warn about market concentration in AI infrastructure.

At the same time, vivid public scares over ultra‑real videos - officials and opposition leaders mistook a boilerplate announcement for an AI‑generated clip - have pushed regulators to demand explicit deepfake labels and obvious disclosures for generative outputs, narrowing the window for “AI without notice.” For teams building or buying GenAI for government use, the takeaway is practical: document training sources, secure licenses or rely on cleared datasets, build watermarking/labeling into outputs, and watch fast‑moving litigation and agency guidance that could reshape fair‑use norms and procurement risk in months not years (for legal framing, read Debevoise's analysis of GenAI obligations and Chambers' IP litigation coverage).

Notify individual users in advance that their product or service uses GenAI.

South Korea's sectoral rollout puts healthcare squarely in the fast lane: the AI Framework Act explicitly treats healthcare as a

high‑impact domain,

meaning hospitals and public health programs will be first to feel both the incentives and the oversight that come with national policy - the government has invested in research centers and AI‑related health projects and even signed an agreement with the U.S. FDA to speed medical AI development, fueling use cases from medical imaging and personalized treatment plans to robots that deliver medicine and serve as companions for elderly patients; those investments sit alongside big market growth forecasts (overall AI from $2B in 2022 to nearly $20B by 2032, and healthcare AI from $0.1B in 2022 to $2.1B by 2030).

At the same time, Korea's approach pairs promotion with rules: transparency, lifecycle risk checks and prioritized procurement for systems that complete impact assessments, plus public support for AI data centers and training‑data projects - so government adopters must align pilots with cleared datasets, licensing, and documented safety measures to scale effectively in the public sector.

South Korea has moved quickly from lawmaking to institution‑building: the Korea AI Safety Institute (AISI), launched at the Pangyo Global R&D Center and hosted within ETRI, is already positioned as the nation's hub for AI safety research, testing and standards - running AI safety assessments, drafting policy guidance, and working with industry and academia through a 24‑member Korea AI Safety Consortium to validate evaluation methods and testing toolkits that will inform procurement and certification expectations.

Backed by the Ministry of Science and ICT and plugged into the International Network of AI Safety Institutes, AISI's remit explicitly covers AI safety policy research, evaluation frameworks, testing/verification infrastructure and international collaboration, which means government teams should expect technical testing, model evaluation results and AISI guidance to become practical inputs to risk reviews and vendor selection.

For agencies and vendors this creates a clear “one‑stop” resource for standards, technical validation and capacity building: visit the Korea AI Safety Institute (AISI) official overview and the Ministry of Science and ICT announcement on AISI launch to see how standards and incentives are being coordinated on the ground.

“The institute will focus on evaluating potential risks associated with AI utilization, developing and disseminating policies and technologies to prevent and minimize these risks, and strengthening collaboration both domestically and internationally.”

Start with a short, practical map: catalog every AI system and dataset, classify which tools qualify as “high‑impact,” and run privacy and impact checks before any procurement or pilot - because under Korea's AI Basic Act an unseen model can no longer quietly change someone's benefits or access.

Build lifecycle risk management around compute thresholds, bake generative‑AI labeling and output‑watermarking into deployment plans, and document licenses and training sources so IP and PIPC scrutiny don't become a surprise; foreign vendors that meet thresholds must also designate a domestic representative to receive MSIT notices and support compliance.

Coordinate cross‑agency obligations (MSIT for safety, PIPC for personal data), centralize records for audits, and use vendor checklists - OneTrust's step‑by‑step compliance checklist is a useful playbook for transparency, risk controls and governance - and follow PIPC guidance on automated decisions to shape explanations and consent workflows.

Finally, invest in human capital now: short, practical upskilling for procurement, legal and program teams (for example, Nucamp AI Essentials for Work 15‑week bootcamp registration) turns regulatory chores into operational competence and makes compliance a competitive advantage rather than a last‑minute scramble.

it is part of our endeavors to meet halfway between protecting personal data and encouraging AI-driven innovation. This will be a great guidance material for the development and usage of trustworthy AI.