Accessibility laws · South Korea

South Korea: Disability Discrimination Act and KWCAG

In September 2017, 963 blind plaintiffs sued the online marketplace Gmarket because the product photos its sellers uploaded carried no alternative text. Nine years later, on 12 March 2026, Korea's Supreme Court finished the case. The marketplace has to add alternative text within six months of the judgment becoming final, and it does not have to pay anybody. A first-instance court had awarded ₩100,000 per plaintiff. The Seoul High Court cancelled that award, holding there was indirect discrimination but no intent or negligence behind it, and the Supreme Court confirmed the cancellation.

Discrimination act in force: 2008
National standard: KWCAG
Supreme Court web ruling: Mar 2026
Certification mark: Voluntary

What the law is

The Act on the Prohibition of Discrimination Against Persons with Disabilities has been in force since 11 April 2008. Article 20 prohibits discriminating against disabled people in using and reaching electronic and non-electronic information. Article 21 then puts a positive duty on the actors it lists. They have to provide Korean sign language, text, and other necessary means, so that disabled people can reach and use the information those actors produce and distribute. The Enforcement Decree fills in what necessary means covers. The first item on that list is a website whose accessibility is guaranteed, so that anyone can use the service they want regardless of physical or technical conditions. So an inaccessible website is not a policy failure here. It is a discriminatory act with a court remedy behind it.

The technical standard is KWCAG, the Korean Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and it is a national standard in its own right rather than a translation of WCAG. It became a national standard in 2005 and was revised in 2010, 2015, and 2022. The current version, KWCAG 2.2, was published on 28 December 2022 by the National Radio Research Agency, and it reflects the latest revisions of WCAG 2.1 and 2.2. It carries 33 checkpoints, up from 24 in the previous version, under the same four principles WCAG uses. The nine that were added cover keyboard shortcuts, pointer cancellation, accessible authentication, avoiding repeated input, and findable help. One caution. The W3C's own policy listing for Korea is out of date, naming KWCAG 2.1 and the wrong statute, so check the Korean sources rather than that page.

The phase-in did not finish in 2015, which is where most timelines stop. Web content came in by sector between 2009 and 2015, starting with public bodies. Then a 2021 amendment added mobile application software to the Act, a 2023 amendment to the Decree gave it substance, and kiosks got their own duty in the same amendment. Those newer duties came in through three phases. Public institutions, educational institutions, medical institutions, financial institutions, and transport facilities from 28 January 2024. Cultural and arts businesses, welfare facilities, and businesses over 100 employees from 28 July 2024. Tourism businesses and businesses under 100 employees from 28 January 2025. The technical bar for kiosks and apps now sits under the Digital Inclusion Act, which took effect on 22 January 2026 and absorbed the accessibility certification scheme.

This applies to you if…

You are a Korean public body, school, hospital, or welfare provider, all of which the web phase-in had reached by 2015.
You are a private business in a covered sector serving Korean users. The discrimination duty does not stop at the public sector line the way many countries' laws do, and that has been true since the first web phase in 2009.
You run an online marketplace where other people upload the content. This is the holding worth reading twice. Gmarket argued that it merely takes fees from sellers, that listings are the sellers' responsibility, and that with roughly 600,000 products registered a day it cannot practically check each one for alternative text. The courts rejected all of it, on the reasoning that sellers distribute product information to consumers through the marketplace, so the marketplace carries the duty. Plaintiffs' counsel described the ruling as reaching every online shopping mall rather than only Gmarket.
You operate a kiosk in Korea or publish a mobile app there, both of which are separate duties from the website one. Carve-outs for kiosks were added in November 2025. They cover neighbourhood-facility premises under 50 square metres, kiosks installed by small business owners, and small products the Minister designates. Each one is conditional on a compatible assistive device or software being installed, or staff being on hand with a call bell.
You are tendering for Korean public work, where the Web Accessibility Quality Certification mark gets asked for routinely even though holding one is voluntary in law.

What it technically requires

Conform to KWCAG 2.2, the national standard, which means 33 checkpoints rather than WCAG's 55 at A and AA combined. Testing to WCAG 2.2 Level AA covers what those checkpoints expect and gives you margin, because KWCAG 2.2 was built from WCAG 2.1 and 2.2 in the first place.
Put alternative text on the images, and take the Supreme Court's own scope as your specification. The order it upheld covers product information, transaction-condition information, and text appearing inside product advertisements and event notices. If the words are baked into a picture, they need to exist as text as well.
Answer requests for other formats inside seven days, which is a deadline almost nobody quotes. Where a disabled person asks for one of the other means the Decree lists, you have seven days from the request. That list is long. A sign language interpreter, Braille materials, a Braille information terminal, large print, a magnifier, recorded tape, a standard text file, captions, a print-to-speech converter, a video phone, and a relay phone.
Meet the mobile app duty on its own terms, because it asks for more than a conformant build. You comply with the verification standards the Minister of Science and ICT publishes. You provide a mark that lets a disabled person check compliance before purchasing or installing, which is a requirement we have seen in no other jurisdiction. You provide the information needed to install and use the software by disability type. You give people a way to reach you in Korean sign language, text, or voice when installation or use goes wrong. And you support voice commands where the software is hard to operate otherwise.
Install kiosks that meet the Ministry's verification standard, and add a voice guidance device that announces where the kiosk is. A machine a blind customer cannot find is a machine they cannot use, and Korean law treats those as the same problem.

All roads lead to WCAG. Start with Level AA, the legal standard or the full 55-rule library. Unfamiliar term along the way? The A to Z glossary decodes it.

How it is enforced

The Gmarket judgment is the clearest statement of what Korean courts will actually order. Alternative text, within six months of the judgment becoming final, across product and transaction information and the text inside advertisements and event notices. What they would not order was money, and the reason is structural rather than sympathetic. The appellate court accepted that the blind plaintiffs suffered considerable mental distress, and still dismissed the consolation-money claim because it found no intent or negligence in the discriminatory act. The Supreme Court found no error in that. Plaintiffs' counsel made the point that matters next, which is that a company failing to comply with the order does then bear a damages obligation.

The damages rules are unusually favourable to claimants, which is what makes that outcome worth understanding. Anyone who causes loss by breaking the Act is liable unless the discriminator proves the absence of intent or negligence, so the burden runs the other way from most systems. Where loss is established but the claimant cannot prove a money figure, the discriminator's gain is presumed to be the claimant's loss. And where the amount is hard to prove by its nature, the court may set a reasonable one from the evidence. The claimant proves the discriminatory act happened. The respondent has to prove it was not disability-based, or that there was justifiable cause. On 13 April 2026 eighteen of the blind plaintiffs took the damages refusal to the Constitutional Court, arguing that finding discrimination while awarding nothing contradicts those very provisions. So this question is live, not closed.

Behind the courts sits a chain most summaries never mention. A complaint goes to the National Human Rights Commission, which investigates and recommends. Where someone ignores a recommendation without justifiable cause, the Minister of Justice may issue a corrective order. The grounds include cases affecting many victims, repeated discrimination, and deliberate non-compliance meant to disadvantage the victim. That order can require the discrimination to stop, the victim to be restored, and measures taken to stop it happening again. Bring administrative litigation within 30 days or the order becomes final. Ignore a final order without justifiable cause and the administrative fine reaches ₩30 million. And there is a prison term at the end of it. Maliciousness gets judged on intent, persistence, repetition, retaliation, and the scale of the harm. Where a court finds it, the penalty runs to three years in prison or a fine up to ₩30 million. The company is liable to the same fine unless it took due care.

Courts can also move before the case ends. Where discrimination is established on the face of it, a court may order interim measures, including stopping the conduct. On the victim's claim it may order cessation and affirmative corrective measures, with a deadline attached and a fixed payment for each period of delay. Alongside all of that runs the Web Accessibility Quality Certification, which is voluntary in law and expected in practice, since Korean buyers ask for the mark and publish it as a badge. Not holding one costs you contracts quietly, long before any of the machinery above ever reaches you.

Key dates

Apr 11, 2008Disability Discrimination Act takes effect
2009Phased application to web content begins with public bodies
2015Final phase extends the duty across covered private sectors

What to do about it

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Orientation only, current as of August 2026. Not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created. For your specific situation, talk to your own lawyer.