The 26 July implementation of part one of South Korea\u2019s new Art Promotion Act\u2014the country\u2019s first law governing the art market\u2014has left galleries, auction houses and dealers scrambling to comply. Infrastructure has lagged: the enforcement decree was published only two days before the law took effect, and its implementing rule followed in the official gazette on 27 July. <\/p>\n
There is still no electronic filing system, and municipal officials who will process the paperwork received their single training session three days before the rules kicked in.<\/p>\n
\u201cAware that a newly introduced system would cause some confusion in the field, we also set a one-year grace period\u201d until 25 July 2027, a Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism official told The Art Newspaper on condition of anonymity, adding that the ministry planned weekly briefings for local governments during the law\u2019s first month, \u201cto reduce confusion on the ground and identify improvements to reflect in the system\u201d.<\/p>\n
The registration requirement covers six categories of art business, from galleries and auctioneers to advisers and appraisers, which must now report to their local district office. The ministry estimates around 5,000 businesses are affected. Fines of up to 5m won ($3,500) apply for non-compliance beyond the grace period.<\/p>\n
According to materials obtained by Kim Jae-won, a National Assembly member of the opposition Rebuilding Korea Party who sits on the culture committee, filings will be processed manually for around a year because no management system has been built. \u201cThe ministry had three years after the law passed, yet left municipalities\u2019 preparation to three days before launch,\u201d Kim says, adding that the grace period should be used to check readiness, not as a shield to defer responsibility.<\/p>\n
\u2018Deepening the gaps\u2019<\/p>\n
Awareness inside the industry is strikingly uneven. At one major Seoul gallery, which declined to be named, the compliance team came away from a government briefing unconvinced that a second registration\u2014layered on its existing business licence\u2014serves much purpose beyond building the paper trail needed for the resale royalty rules that will be introduced in 2027.<\/p>\n
The law formalises what professional galleries already handle on trust, says Emma Son, a partner at Lehmann Maupin\u2019s Seoul gallery. \u201cWe already do this a lot,\u201d she says of the commissions many foreign galleries already arrange with artists on resale. She knows of no other country that has tried to force this kind of mandatory record-keeping, and expects whatever benefits follow to concentrate at the high end. \u201cIt ends up favouring artists who already trade a lot,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019ll just deepen the gap between the rich and the poor.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Galleries Association of Korea has been fielding members\u2019 questions, most commonly about where and when to file, says Jung Hyeonkyeong, the association\u2019s secretary-general. The association itself learned that no online system was ready \u201cthrough media reports\u201d, not from the ministry directly. It lobbied throughout for filing requirements to stay \u201crealistic and minimal\u201d for existing operators, and believes much of that input shaped the final design.<\/p>\n
Rate uncertainty<\/p>\n
Next year\u2019s resale royalty entitles artists to a percentage each time a work resells through the trade, for their lifetime plus 30 years. Works under 5m won ($3,500) are exempt, as are resales within three years of a direct purchase from the artist for under 20m won ($14,100), an exemption modelled on the European Union\u2019s. What no one yet knows is the rate: the only official signal, a 2017 ministry-commissioned study, modelled 1%-2% with a cap of 15m won ($10,600) per sale, and estimated the total annual pool at no more than 2bn won ($1.4m) across around 376 artists.<\/p>\n
The association\u2019s position is that the royalty is \u201cpremature\u201d, Jung says: market-support measures should come first and, once introduced, the right would benefit only \u201ca very small number of artists actively traded at auction\u201d, while tighter tracking of sales could burden buyers more. The government is considering a possible minimal-data model similar to music-royalty collection. South Korea will be the first major Asian art market with resale royalties.<\/p>\n
An overarching art law was first mooted in Korea\u2019s 2011 free-trade deal with the EU, named as a 2018 policy target, and finally passed in 2023, absorbing an earlier art-distribution bill.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe year\u2019s head start for registration isn\u2019t a coincidence,\u201d says Kathleen Kim, a lawyer who teaches at Hongik University. \u201cIt\u2019s designed to lay the data infrastructure the resale royalty will need.\u201d She notes that the rate and distribution procedure remain undefined, and the collecting body\u2019s capacity to operate is untested. \u201cIn the end,\u201d she says, \u201cthis will be decided not by the text of the law but by the execution infrastructure behind it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 26 July implementation of part one of South Korea\u2019s new Art Promotion Act\u2014the country\u2019s first law governing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":832920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[6185,352667,228,226,227,229,88,9746,1866],"class_list":["post-832919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-art-market","tag-artists-resale-rights","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-law","tag-south-korea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=832919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/832920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=832919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=832919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=832919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}