--- title: "Korea PIPA Domestic Agent | Article 31-2" url: "https://www.engagecompliance.co/korea-pipa-representative-services" type: "service" date: "2026-09-10" --- # Korea PIPA Domestic Agent South Korea's Personal Information Protection Act requires certain foreign companies with no office in Korea to designate a domestic agent. The duty sits at PIPA Article 31-2, and the agent has to be located in Korea. **The short answer: above thresholds set by Enforcement Decree Article 32-2, a foreign company with no office, place of business, or facility in Korea has to designate a domestic agent who is located in Korea. Because the agent has to be in Korea, we deliver this through a vetted local partner and manage the designation, remaining your single point of contact.** We do not publish the exact thresholds here, and say plainly why below. ## What the Korean requirement is PIPA Article 31-2, Designation of a domestic agent, requires certain foreign personal information controllers with no office, place of business, or facility in Korea to designate an agent located in Korea. The provision was introduced by the March 2023 amendment to PIPA and renumbered from the former Article 39-11, which had applied only to information and communications service providers before the amendment broadened it. The thresholds that decide who is caught sit in Enforcement Decree Article 32-2, not in the Act itself, and those thresholds have themselves moved: the revenue test was amended to use total company sales revenue rather than revenue from the online business division alone, effective 15 September 2023. Because the thresholds are set by decree rather than by the Act, and because they have already changed once, we treat them as something to confirm against the current text at the time of scoping rather than a fixed number to publish and let go stale. ## Who needs it A company with no office, place of business, or facility in Korea whose Korean-directed processing puts it above the Enforcement Decree Article 32-2 thresholds. The exact test is a scoping question, confirmed against the current decree rather than answered generically, because the thresholds have already been revised once since the duty was introduced. ## Who can hold the role Article 31-2 requires the agent to be located in Korea. There is no route for a company established outside Korea, ours included, to perform the role directly. This is the same structural point that governs the China and Turkey appointments: a written mandate from an EU establishment is not enough where the local statute ties the role to local presence. ## What we do - **Local domestic agent designation**, coordinated through a vetted Korean partner who meets the location requirement. - **Filing and maintenance** of the designation as your Korean footprint or processing changes. - **Threshold scoping**, confirmed against the current Enforcement Decree rather than a number quoted from memory, before you rely on it either way. - **Single point of contact.** You deal with Engage throughout; we manage the relationship with the local partner. - **Coordination with your wider footprint**, including an EU or UK representative and a DPO, where you need more than one appointment. ## How it works **Scoping.** We confirm against the current statute and Enforcement Decree whether the domestic agent duty applies to you, rather than apply a threshold that may already be out of date. **Designation.** The domestic agent is engaged through our local partner and formally designated. **Filing.** The designation is filed and recorded as the statute requires. **Ongoing.** The agent remains the designated Korean contact, and we keep the designation current when your footprint or processing changes. ## What it costs This appointment is scoped per engagement rather than sold as a published flat fee, because the local partner's own fee varies by case and the threshold test itself needs confirming before scope is fixed. Where it sits inside a wider privacy program, it is scoped alongside the DPO tiers, which start From €1,000 per month for DPO Foundation. See [pricing](/pricing) for the published DPO and EU representative figures. ## Why Engage Compliance We are honest about the boundary. The Korean agent has to be located in Korea, so we do not claim to hold the role ourselves, and we do not publish a threshold figure that could already be stale. We scope whether the duty applies to you against the current Enforcement Decree, coordinate the vetted local partner who holds the role, manage the filing, and stay your single point of contact. Where you also need an EU or UK representative or a DPO, we scope all of it together. Every engagement carries professional indemnity and cyber insurance. ## Sources and references - Personal Information Protection Act, Article 31-2 (Designation of a domestic agent), as amended March 2023 - Enforcement Decree of the Personal Information Protection Act, Article 32-2, as amended with effect from 15 September 2023 - [Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC)](https://www.pipc.go.kr/eng/), the Korean data protection regulator ## Frequently asked questions ### Can Engage also act as our DPO? Yes. Engage supports both Data Protection Officer work and Article 27 representative work, as two separate products scoped to what you need. See [DPO Services](/outsourced-dpo-services). ### Does a foreign company need a domestic agent in Korea under PIPA? Above certain processing thresholds, yes, if you have no office, place of business, or facility in Korea. The duty sits at PIPA Article 31-2, Designation of a domestic agent, which was introduced by the March 2023 amendment and renumbered from the earlier Article 39-11, a provision that used to apply only to information and communications service providers. The current thresholds are set by Enforcement Decree Article 32-2. ### What are the exact thresholds and penalties? We do not state a number here. The Enforcement Decree Article 32-2 thresholds were themselves amended, moving the revenue test from online-business revenue to total company revenue with effect from 15 September 2023, which means a stale figure is worse than none. This session could not retrieve an official English text of the current Enforcement Decree to quote from directly, so the exact revenue and user-count thresholds, and the administrative fine for non-compliance, are confirmed as part of scoping against the current statute rather than published on this page from memory. ### Who can act as our domestic agent in Korea? PIPA Article 31-2 requires the agent to be located in Korea. A company established outside Korea, ours included, cannot perform the role directly from abroad, which is why this appointment is delivered through a vetted local partner rather than run from our own establishment, the same structural fact that applies to the China and Turkey appointments. ### What does the domestic agent actually do? Acts as the designated point of contact inside Korea for the Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) and for data subjects, on matters the statute assigns to the agent. The designation itself, and any change to it, is a filing that has to be kept current as your Korean footprint changes. ### Is a Korea PIPA domestic agent the same as a GDPR Article 27 EU representative? No. They answer to different regulators under different statutes, and appointing one does not satisfy the other. A company selling into both the EU and Korea typically needs both appointments, and we arrange them together along with a DPO where you need one. ### Can Engage Compliance be our domestic agent in Korea directly? No. The agent has to be located in Korea, so we coordinate a qualifying local partner and manage the designation and its filing, remaining your single point of contact. We say this plainly rather than let a buyer assume an EU establishment can cover it, because it cannot.