South Korea is moving toward new copyright and royalty standards for AI-assisted music just as songs made with generative tools are beginning to reach the country’s mainstream streaming charts.
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism announced September 21st that it will convene a public forum at the National Assembly on September 22nd focused on how music involving generative AI should be registered, licensed and managed by copyright organizations.
At the center is a question with major consequences for songwriters: how much human creative contribution does an AI-assisted song need before it can be treated as a copyrightable musical work?
The Culture Ministry announcement describes the meeting as the beginning of a broader discussion over trust management and royalty distribution for music created with generative AI. Future forums are expected to address how payments should be divided among rightsholders.
Korea already has a real-world example showing why those questions are no longer theoretical. “Forest of the Heart,” a song combining human-written lyrics with melody and vocals generated through Suno, reached Melon’s Top 100 this year even though its creator reportedly receives no songwriter copyright royalties from the track.
Human Contribution Is the Central Question
The September 22nd forum is being organized by the Culture Ministry, the office of National Assembly member Kim Jae-won and the K-Music Rights Organizations Coexistence Committee.
Six music-industry organizations participate in the committee, including the Korea Music Copyright Association, or KOMCA, the Korea Music Performers’ Association and the Korea Popmusic Industry Association. Together they represent interests spanning songwriters, performers, labels and other parts of the music business.
Kim Hye-chang, head of policy research at the Korea Copyright Commission, is scheduled to discuss copyright-registration standards for generative-AI works and approaches being taken overseas. Attorney Seol Ji-hye of Yulchon will address possible revisions to the rules copyright-trust organizations use when registering AI-related music, The Korea Times details.
The distinction between AI-generated and AI-assisted music is crucial. A track produced almost entirely by a generative system raises a different authorship question from one where a person writes lyrics, composes music, performs an instrument or makes other identifiable creative decisions while using AI elsewhere in the process.
Korea has maintained that output created without human creative input cannot receive conventional copyright protection. The harder question is where to draw the line when human and machine contributions coexist.
Other copyright systems are wrestling with the same distinction. The U.S. Copyright Office, for example, has maintained that copyright protects human-created expression and that prompts alone generally do not give a user enough control over AI output to establish authorship. AI involvement itself does not necessarily eliminate protection for the human-created portions of a work.
South Korea now needs a standard that can turn that broad principle into practical music registration and royalty administration.
“Forest of the Heart” Made the Problem Real
That question has already moved from policy papers onto one of Korea’s largest music platforms.
“Forest of the Heart,” released in May by YouTube creator Joseon HipHop, peaked at No. 89 on Melon’s Top 100 and No. 99 on its daily chart, The Korea Times reports.
Joseon HipHop wrote the lyrics and used Suno to generate the melody and vocals. The song subsequently spread through word of mouth, particularly among listeners in their 40s, before entering the Melon rankings.
Its chart performance creates an unusually concrete copyright problem. A song can be commercially released, streamed by enough listeners to enter a major chart and generate revenue even while the rights system is still deciding how the human contribution should be classified.
Joseon HipHop reportedly receives neighboring-rights income tied to the recording as its producer rather than songwriter copyright royalties tied to the underlying composition. That distinction determines which rights the creator can claim and which revenue streams are available.
Nothing about the song’s chart position resolves the authorship question. Popularity demonstrates that listeners are engaging with a work; it does not establish whether the human contribution satisfies copyright standards.
KOMCA’s AI Rules Lasted 22 Days
Korea’s largest music copyright organization attempted to create a practical standard in August, only to reverse course within weeks.
On August 3rd, KOMCA introduced rules allowing certain AI-assisted musical works to be registered for trust management when a person had made a substantive creative contribution. Human involvement could include lyrics, composition, arrangement or other creative elements.
Prompt-only generation was treated differently. Works created simply by entering instructions into an AI system were excluded from the framework, while applicants using AI were expected to disclose where the technology had been used and identify their own creative contribution.
The approach attempted to separate AI as a tool from AI as the source of the expression being claimed for copyright administration.
A KOMCA representative told Korea JoongAng Daily that registration was not intended to create copyright or make a legal determination that an AI-assisted song qualified for protection. KOMCA administers music rights and royalties; it does not have unilateral authority to rewrite Korean copyright law.
Criticism nevertheless emerged over whether one collecting society should establish practical AI-music standards before lawmakers, government officials and the wider creative sector had reached a consensus.
Kim Jae-won challenged the process, and the Culture Ministry sent KOMCA an official letter August 18th calling for broader public discussion before the new rules were implemented.
On August 25th, just 22 days after the rules were introduced, KOMCA’s board withdrew them. Korea JoongAng Daily documented the reversal and reported that registrations made under the short-lived framework were canceled.
The withdrawal left Korea without the practical registration standard KOMCA had attempted to create and shifted the issue toward a broader process involving government, creators, lawmakers, technology experts and multiple music organizations.
Thousands of Submitted Songs May Already Use AI
The policy problem reaches far beyond one charting Suno-assisted song.
A government audit found that 29 composers had each submitted more than 200 songs to KOMCA during 2024. Roughly 5,200 of those works showed indications of generative-AI use, according to findings cited by The Korea Times.
The figure does not mean 5,200 songs were conclusively generated entirely by AI. It indicates that thousands of submitted works may involve generative technology to some degree, which is precisely why a workable distinction between AI-generated and AI-assisted music matters.
KOMCA and five other Korean music-industry organizations are also reportedly selecting a provider for an AI-music detection system. Identifying partial AI use, however, can be more complicated than detecting a track generated almost entirely by a model.
One creator might use AI to generate a melody before adding substantial human arrangement and performance. Another could release output produced from prompts with minimal creative alteration. Both involve generative AI, but the human authorship is not equivalent.
A rights system that treats every use of AI identically risks ignoring those differences. A system that evaluates every creative decision individually could become difficult to administer at the scale suggested by thousands of submissions.
Registration Determines More Than a Credit
The argument over AI-assisted music is ultimately about money as much as authorship.
KOMCA and similar copyright organizations license compositions, collect usage fees and distribute royalties to rightsholders. Whether a work can enter that system can affect whether a claimed songwriter receives composition income when music is streamed, performed, broadcast or otherwise licensed.
“Forest of the Heart” illustrates the gap. Its creator can reportedly participate economically through neighboring rights connected with the recording while receiving no songwriter copyright royalties for the AI-generated melody.
A future standard therefore needs to do more than decide whether someone’s name can appear beside a composition. It can influence which rights are administered, which human contributions qualify for protection and how money moves when people and generative systems both participate in creating a track.
The Culture Ministry has already signaled that one meeting will not settle those questions. September 22nd is described as the first in a planned series, with a later forum expected to focus specifically on royalty distribution for AI-assisted music, the ministry says.
The order of those discussions is significant. Before a copyright organization can determine how income from an AI-assisted composition should be divided, it first needs a workable method for identifying what human authorship exists within the work.
The Royalty Rules Now Have to Catch Up
South Korea’s AI-music debate has reached a different stage from the familiar argument over whether generative technology will eventually affect songwriting.
It already has.
An AI-assisted song has entered Melon’s Top 100. Thousands of works submitted to KOMCA have shown indications of generative-AI involvement. Korea’s largest music copyright society introduced a registration framework and withdrew it 22 days later.
Now the government is bringing creators, copyright organizations, lawyers, technology specialists and policymakers into the same discussion.
The September 22nd forum will not produce a complete answer by itself. The Culture Ministry has explicitly positioned it as the beginning of a series, while royalty distribution remains scheduled for later discussion.
That may be the clearest sign of how complicated the problem has become. Deciding whether AI-assisted music can be registered is only the first question. The next is who gets paid once it is.
“Forest of the Heart” has already demonstrated that AI-assisted music can find an audience before those rules exist.
Korea’s copyright system now has to decide what happens after listeners press play.