Telecommunications Business Act, last amended Act No. 12761, October 15, 2014 (English Version)

(1) According to Article 27(2)6, a value-added telecommunications service provider of special type (the special types of OSPs such as P2P or web-hard service providers under Article 104 of the Copyright Act) which has been imposed the fine under Article 142(1) of the Copyright Act for more than three times may have its registration cancelled or its business suspended. “Value-added telecommunication service providers” is the term of art that describes all online hosts of applications and contents.

(2) The amendment by Act no. 12761 on 15 October 2014, which came into force on April 16, 2015, newly included Article 22-3 which compels those special types OSPs to adopt technical measures prescribed by Presidential Decree to prevent circulation of obscene materials. Those OSPs in violation of Article 22-3 will be punished by a civil fine not exceeding 20 million won under Article 104(3)1and its registration may be cancelled or its business suspended upon a request from the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) (Article 27(2)3-2). The Presidential Decree, the Enforcement Decree of the Telecommunications Business Act, was drafted by the KCC and came into force on the same day as the Act. As predicted, the Enforcement Decree lays out technical measures very similar to the corresponding provisions under the Presidential Decree of the Copyright Act, such as DB based filtering and keywords bans. The law basically treats obscene materials and copyrighted works the same. However, unlike copyrighted works, there is no clear standard on obscenity and there is yet no automatic, computerized process that perfectly filters obscene contents – that means the OSPs need to check all contents manually. The law imposes general monitoring obligation on those special types of OSPs which is technically impossible to abide by.