You Filmed It, They Paid For It: Who Owns Your Content in Korea?

7 min read

A brand pays for a shoot, you deliver the video, and six months later you find the same clip running as a paid ad on a platform you never agreed to, past the date you thought the deal ended. The invoice is long settled. The question of who actually owns that clip was never asked out loud — and under Korean law, paying for a video and owning it are not the same thing.

  • Article 9A company only becomes the default author of a work-for-hire when you were its employee, under its direction — most freelance gigs aren't that
  • Article 14Your right to be credited and to keep the work unaltered can't be sold away, even if you sign over the copyright itself
  • ₩10,000–₩50,000+What Korea's Copyright Commission charges to mediate a dispute over this, scaled to what's at stake

Who owns it by default

저작권법 (the Copyright Act) starts from a simple rule: the person who creates a work is its author, and copyright exists the moment it's made — no registration, no filing. Article 9 carves out one exception, for a 업무상저작물, a work made for hire: if an employee of a company creates it in the course of their job, under the company's direction, and it's published under the company's name, the company — not the employee — is treated as the default author, unless their contract or work rules say otherwise.

That exception is written around an actual employment relationship. Legal commentary on how courts apply it points to the same requirements every time: the company has to have planned the work, there has to be a real employment and supervision relationship, the work has to fall inside what that person was hired to do, and it has to go out under the company's name. A freelance creator invoiced per campaign, taking creative direction loosely and working on their own equipment and schedule, doesn't fit that shape — which means the default author, and the default copyright holder, stays you.

Korean copyright law's work-for-hire exception applies to an employee under a company's direction, publishing under its name — a freelance creator paid per gig usually doesn't meet that test, so by default the creator stays the copyright holder. Freelance, paid per gig No employment, no direction Article 9 doesn't apply Employee under direction Published under the company's name Article 9 applies You're the default author The brand gets only what you license The company is the default author Unless the contract says otherwise
Paying for the shoot isn't the test. Employment and direction are.
What doesn't change this Nationality doesn't gate any of this. Article 3 protects a foreign national's work in Korea under the treaties Korea has joined — the Berne Convention and the WTO's TRIPS agreement among them — and anyone who creates a work here is covered under domestic law regardless. As an **expat** creator working in **Korea**, the starting point is the same one a Korean creator gets.

License, or assignment — the contract has to pick one

Owning the copyright by default doesn't mean the brand gets nothing. It means what they get depends entirely on what the contract actually grants: a narrow 이용허락 (license) to use the content for a specific purpose, or a full 저작재산권 양도 (assignment) that hands the copyright itself over.

이용허락 (license)

You keep the copyright. The brand can use the content only for what was agreed — a platform, a campaign, a time window. Anything outside that needs a new agreement.

저작재산권 양도 (assignment)

You hand over the copyright itself. The brand can reuse, re-edit or resell the content as its own going forward — but your moral rights stay yours regardless.

A contract that just says "deliverables belong to the brand," with no platform, duration or boosting scope spelled out, isn't a license at all — it's a gap, and gaps don't automatically read in favor of whoever paid. In a 2021 ruling over a product photo shoot where the usage contract never specified how long the brand could keep using the image, Korea's Supreme Court (대법원 2021다219116, July 21, 2021) rejected the idea that paying for the shoot meant unlimited use for as long as the product stayed on sale — per legal reporting on the ruling, the court held that silence on duration confines use to a reasonable scope, and that it's the party publishing the content who has to prove consent covered it. That case turned on portrait rights, not copyright specifically, but the same logic is the one a copyright dispute over an unscoped contract would run into: silence favors the creator, not the brand.

The clause that goes quiet most often Watch for a contract that licenses "posting" the content without saying whether that includes the brand running it as a paid ad afterward — organic reposting and paid media are different uses, and a contract that only covers one doesn't automatically cover the other.

One thing no contract can sign away, in either direction: 저작인격권, your moral rights. Article 14 makes them exclusive to the actual creator — the right to be credited and the right to keep the work from being altered in a way that damages how it represents you. Some Korean ad contracts add a separate clause where the creator agrees not to exercise those rights for a specific use, since the rights themselves can't be transferred — whether a clause like that holds up is specific to its wording, so it's worth a read before signing rather than assuming it's boilerplate.

If it actually turns into a dispute

A copyright dispute over sponsored content in Korea typically starts with a direct ask to the brand or agency, then moves to the Korea Copyright Commission's mediation service, which targets a decision within three months, before court becomes necessary. Ask directly Brand or agency first Copyright Commission Paid mediation, scaled to the claim Targets a result within 3 months Court Last resort
Mediation is cheaper and faster than it sounds — and it isn't free.

The 한국저작권위원회 (Korea Copyright Commission) runs a dedicated mediation service for exactly this kind of disagreement, separate from the artist fee mediation KAWF handles for unpaid bookings (see our artist dispute mediation guide for that one). It isn't free, but it scales to what's actually in dispute:

Amount in dispute Mediation fee
Up to ₩1,000,000 Flat ₩10,000
₩1,000,000–5,000,000 Flat ₩30,000
₩5,000,000–10,000,000 1% of the claim
₩10,000,000–100,000,000 0.1% of the claim + ₩100,000
Over ₩100,000,000 0.01% of the claim + ₩200,000
Can't be priced in money Flat ₩50,000

Applications go in online through the Commission's own site, or by mail or in person to its Seoul office. The Commission targets a decision within three months of filing, and if it issues one on its own initiative rather than by agreement, either side has two weeks from receiving it to object in writing.

What Soo House sees

Soo House connects foreign resident creators, models and performers in Korea to paid brand campaigns through Discover, where a brand pays a creator directly for the content they make. Scope is written into those briefs upfront — platform, duration, whether boosting is included — specifically because the alternative is finding out later, the way members tell us it's gone wrong with deals they signed outside the app.

What we hear about most isn't Discover's own campaigns, which spell this out. It's the brand deal signed off to the side, through a DM or an agency intro, where "rights to the content" is one line with nothing under it. That line is exactly where this guide's distinction matters: it's rarely that the brand is owed less than they think, and far more often that nobody wrote down what they were actually owed in the first place.

Your Next Hop

Before your next brand deal, read the usage clause for three things: which platforms, how long, and whether paid boosting is included. If any of the three is missing, ask for it in writing before you deliver the file — not after you see where the clip ended up.

Checked in October 2026 directly against the Korea Copyright Commission's official English-language text of Copyright Act Articles 9 and 14 at copyright.or.kr, the Commission's own mediation fee schedule and process page, and a Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism-linked summary of Article 3's foreign-works protection. The Article 9 requirements (planning, employment and direction, scope of duties, publication under the company's name) and the Supreme Court's 2021다219116 ruling (July 21, 2021) are drawn from secondary legal commentary and case-database reporting rather than the court's own published opinion, which this guide didn't load directly — confirm either at law.go.kr or scourt.go.kr before relying on them in an actual dispute. This is general information, not legal advice.

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