Copyright law of South Korea

Copyright law of South Korea is regulated by the Copyright Act of 1957. It has been amended several times, with a recent 2009 revision introducing a three strikes policy for online copyright infringement.

The concept of copyright first appeared in Korean writings in 1884. The history of the Korean copyright law dates to 1908, when during the occupation of Korea, the Japanese copyright law was extended to cover the Korean territories in the form of the international treaty between the United States and Japan on the Protection of Industrial Property in Korea. The Japanese law on copyright was used in Korea until 1957. The major Korean copyright legislation up to date, the Copyright Act of 1957, was enacted on January 28 of that year. This act protected the works for 30 years after the death of the author, and included fair use provisions. Later revisions also addressed issues such as moral rights.

The Act has had 14 amendments, including two consolidations (in 1986 and 2006). The 1986 law extended the length of copyright to 50 years after the author's death, and introduced other modifications, bringing Korean copyright law in line with the Universal Copyright Convention. However, the transitional provisions laid out in the addendum of the 1986 law noted that the new law (and thus its longer term) did not apply to works whose copyright term under the earlier law had already expired. As of 1999, acts of criminal copyright infringement were punishable with a prison term of up to three years and a fine of up to three million won. As of September 2012, the 2006 consolidated version was last amended by Law No. 9625 on April 22, 2009.

The 2009 revision gives the government (represented by the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korean Copyright Commission) the power to delete illegal reproductions, notify the copyright infringers, and suspend their online access, and is an implementation of the three strikes policy. Article 133bis of the Korean Copyright Act allows the Korean Copyright Commission to request that the ISPs suspend the accounts of repeat file-sharing offenders, as determined by the Commission, for six months, and to upgrade this request to a demand if the Ministry becomes involved; the ISP has to follow the Ministry-backed demand or face a fine. However, user email accounts are not to be suspended.

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