Foreign Law Guide

FOREIGN LAW GUIDE

Researching the Law of South Korea

At a glance

Legal system family
Civil law. Article 11 of the Act on the Promulgation of Statutes treats constitutional amendments, Acts, treaties, Presidential Decrees, Ordinances of the Prime Minister and Ministerial Ordinances alike, as instruments promulgated by publication in the Gwanbo. 1
Official gazette
Gwanbo, the Official Gazette. Article 11 of the Act on the Promulgation of Statutes makes publication in it the act of promulgation, and gives the paper Gwanbo and the electronic Gwanbo the same effect. 1
Constitution in force
Constitution of the Republic of Korea, Constitution No. 10 of 29 October 1987, a complete revision, in force from 25 February 1988. Traced to an archived capture of the Korea Law Information Center rather than to a live page. 5
Language of the authoritative text
not established Article 14 of the Framework Act on the Korean Language, on the language of the public documents of public institutions, in a copy served by a host whose bytes can be bound to the address they came from. Every text of that act found here sits on law.go.kr, whose document pages declare a canonical address that answers with a redirect stub rather than with the document.

Korea runs two gazettes and gives them the same legal effect on purpose. Article 11 of the Act on the Promulgation of Statutes makes publication in the Gwanbo the act of promulgation for constitutional amendments, Acts, treaties, Presidential Decrees, Ordinances of the Prime Minister and Ministerial Ordinances, and for the public notice of constitutional amendment bills, of the budget, and of contracts imposing a burden on the treasury outside it. Its third paragraph, added in October 2018, has the Gwanbo operated as a paper gazette and an electronic gazette. Its fourth says that for the interpretation of the contents and the time of application, the two have the same effect.

Several systems in this guide had to choose between an electronic edition and a surviving paper one, and their pages record different answers to what the survivor is for. Korea declined to rank them at all. The practical result is that a Korean citation does not have to say which edition it came from, which is a small mercy nobody notices until they are working in a system that does.

The paper edition has all but disappeared anyway. The publisher says the gazette is now run around the electronic edition and that the paper edition is produced in the smallest number of copies and distributed to nine institutions only, the National Library of Korea, the National Assembly Library, the court library and the National Archives among them. Reading the paper Gwanbo means travelling to one of them, and the same page lists their addresses.

The rhythm is easy to plan around. One volume is issued on each working day in principle, with additional volumes where the material is bulky or something urgent has come up, and an additional volume is numbered as a supplement after the day's serial. The paper edition is printed by the date of issue and delivered to the institutions that hold it. The electronic edition goes up from midnight on the date of issue, so an electronic reader has the day's law most of a day before a paper one does.

The editorial columns are a map of what a Korean instrument is. The list opens with the constitution column, then the statutes, treaties, Presidential Decree, Prime Ministerial Ordinance, Ministerial Ordinance and directives columns, then the notice and announcement columns for what central agencies tell the public. It does not stop there. It runs on to columns for the National Assembly, for the courts, for the Constitutional Court, for the election commission, for the audit board, for the human rights commission, for local authorities, separate columns for appointments and for honours, and last a miscellaneous column for presidential and prime ministerial instructions and for administrative guidance to agencies. Working out which column an instrument sat in tells you its rank before you have read a word of it.

The history explains several things a researcher hits in older material. Issues were dated by the Dangi era down to number 3038 of 31 December 1961 and by the common era from number 3039 the next day, after the act on era names was changed. The layout was horizontal from 1948, went vertical in 1963, and settled into something like its present shape in 1982. The masthead was in Chinese characters until 1969. A citation to a Korean gazette issue from the 1950s reaches into a different numbering system and a different script convention, and neither is signposted.

Printing and distribution were contracted out to a private operator from 1962 and taken back by the ministry in July 2010, after forty seven years, once the electronic edition of 2001 and the ending in 2007 of the duty on public bodies to hold the paper edition had collapsed the subscription base. This is one of the few gazettes anywhere that can date the moment its paper business stopped paying for itself.

Two fields in the block above need explaining rather than skipping past. The Constitution is traced to an archived capture and not to a live page, and that is deliberate. The document pages of the Korea Law Information Center serve the law and then declare a canonical address, written in Hangul and Chinese characters, which answers with a redirect stub rather than with the document. A live copy therefore cannot be bound to the address it came from, so this guide cites a capture from February 2026 and says so in the fact block. The capture gives the Constitution as Constitution No. 10 of 29 October 1987, a complete revision, in force from 25 February 1988.

The language line above is open for the same reason. Korea has a statute prescribing the language of the public documents of public institutions, and every text of it that could be found sits on that one service. Nothing on this page rests on an inference from the observation that the gazette happens to be written in Korean, which is the move a guide reaching for a tidy answer would have made.

One thing the law centre says about itself is worth carrying away whichever service you end up using. Its comparison of old and new law, the feature that shows what an amendment changed, is generated automatically by the system, is offered for reference only, and comes with an instruction to confirm the exact content of an amendment against the amendment statement or against the Gwanbo. A consolidation service that says that about its own most useful feature is being more candid than most of the services in this guide.

Primary sources online

SOURCES

  1. Balhaeng geungeo, the statutory basis of the Gwanbo. Haengjeong Anjeon Bu, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety of the Republic of Korea. https://www.gwanbo.go.kr/user/ofcttIntrcn/basis.do. Accessed 2026-08-30. The gazette quotes the statute that constitutes it. Article 11 of the Act on the Promulgation of Statutes provides that the promulgation of constitutional amendments, Acts, treaties, Presidential Decrees, Ordinances of the Prime Minister and Ministerial Ordinances, and the public notice of constitutional amendment bills, of the budget and of contracts imposing a burden on the treasury outside the budget, is effected by publication in the Gwanbo. Paragraph 3, amended on 16 October 2018, has the Gwanbo operated as a paper gazette and an electronic gazette, and paragraph 4 gives the two the same effect as to the interpretation of the contents and the time of application. The page also names the Presidential Decree and the Ministry of the Interior and Safety ordinance that govern how the gazette is edited, produced and distributed.
  2. Balhaeng annae, how the Gwanbo is issued. Haengjeong Anjeon Bu, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety of the Republic of Korea. https://www.gwanbo.go.kr/user/ofcttIntrcn/guide.do. Accessed 2026-08-30. One volume a working day in principle, with extra volumes where the material is bulky or urgent; the issue number is a running serial by date of issue, with an extra volume numbered as a supplement after it. The paper gazette is printed by the date of issue and delivered to the institutions that hold it, and the electronic gazette goes up on the site from midnight on the date of issue. The page lists the editorial columns in order, and the list is longer than the instruments most readers expect: constitution, statutes, treaties, Presidential Decrees, Prime Ministerial Ordinances, Ministerial Ordinances, directives, the notice and announcement columns, and then columns for the National Assembly, the courts, the Constitutional Court, the election commission, the audit board, the human rights commission, local authorities, appointments, honours, and a final miscellaneous column for presidential and prime ministerial instructions and for administrative guidance to agencies.
  3. Yeoksa wa yeonhyeok, the history of the Gwanbo. Haengjeong Anjeon Bu, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety of the Republic of Korea. https://www.gwanbo.go.kr/user/ofcttIntrcn/history.do. Accessed 2026-08-30. The publisher's account of its own gazette. Issues were dated by the Dangi era down to number 3038 of 31 December 1961 and by the common era from number 3039 of 1 January 1962, following an amendment of the Act on the Era Name. The format was set horizontally from 1948, changed to vertical in 1963, the masthead moved from Chinese characters to Hangul in 1969, and the present format dates from 1982. Printing and distribution were contracted out to a private operator from 1962 and taken back by the ministry in July 2010 after forty seven years. The gazette is now run around the electronic edition, with the paper edition produced in the smallest number and distributed to nine institutions only.
  4. Yeollam jeongbo, where the Gwanbo can be read. Haengjeong Anjeon Bu, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety of the Republic of Korea. https://www.gwanbo.go.kr/user/ofcttIntrcn/readingInfo.do. Accessed 2026-08-30. Reading the gazette means either visiting one of the designated institutions that hold the paper edition or using the electronic gazette site, which carries the issue from midnight on its date of issue. The page lists the holding institutions with their addresses: the National Archives at three locations, the National Library of Korea, the National Library of Korea Sejong, the National Assembly Library, the Supreme Court Library, the library of the Constitutional Court, and the records office of the National Election Commission.
  5. Daehanminguk Heonbeop, the Constitution of the Republic of Korea, archived capture of the Korea Law Information Center page. Beopjecheo, the Ministry of Government Legislation, captured by the Internet Archive. http://web.archive.org/web/20260219092140/https://www.law.go.kr/LSW/lsInfoP.do?lsiSeq=61603. Accessed 2026-08-30. A capture, not a live page, and labelled as one wherever it is cited. The live document pages on law.go.kr declare a canonical address that answers with a redirect stub rather than with the document, so a live copy cannot be bound to its origin here. The header line records the Constitution as Constitution No. 10 of 29 October 1987, a complete revision, in force from 25 February 1988. The centre's own caution on the same page is worth carrying: its comparison of old and new law is generated automatically and is for reference only, and the exact content of an amendment should be confirmed against the amendment statement or against the Gwanbo.

Reviewed 2026-08-30. 5 sources cited on this page.