On 10 September 2026, Korea's culture ministry published a pre-notice of a corrective order against a foreign game publisher over probabilistic-item disclosure (notice no. 2026-0362). The order was served by public notice, gongsi songdal, because the publisher had no Korean address on file to receive it. It is the seventh probability-item notice the ministry has published since December 2025, and the fourth to arrive as a pre-notice rather than a final order. Taken together, the notices now form a pattern a publisher can plan around.

What the September notice says

The document is a pre-notice under Korea's Administrative Procedures Act: before the ministry issues a corrective order under Article 33(2) of the Game Industry Act, the company is invited to submit an opinion. The window closes on 28 September 2026, eighteen days after publication. Silence is treated as having no opinion, and the order then follows.

The cited gaps run to ten items. Nine are inside the game: paid loot boxes, random pet and talent boxes, gift boxes tied to star grades, an entire in-game shop's probabilistic items, each written up as its own violation for not displaying its odds. The tenth is the website: paid probabilistic items sold there carried no odds either. The order sought is the same in each case, to display the probability in the prescribed form, in the game and on the site.

The record since December

  • 29 December 2025. Two notices in one day: a pre-notice to one foreign publisher and a final corrective order to another, both served by public notice.
  • 23 January 2026. A second final order against the same publisher that received the December order, over a different title.
  • 21 May 2026. A pre-notice, with a comment deadline of 8 June.
  • 15 June 2026. The final order in that same matter, twenty-five days after the pre-notice and one week after the deadline passed without a response.
  • 1 June 2026. A further pre-notice, in a separate matter.
  • 10 September 2026. The pre-notice described above.

Read as a series, two things stand out. The ministry is working through cases one at a time, at a cadence of roughly one notice a month with a pause over the summer. And the pre-notice step is not a formality that stalls: where the May pre-notice drew no response, the order issued inside four weeks.

Why the pre-notice matters more than the order

The pre-notice is the last point at which a company can still shape the outcome. The order that follows is also served by public notice, is also deemed delivered whether or not it is read, and lands on the public record with the same citation list attached. A company that does not see the pre-notice does not see the order either. It learns of both, if at all, from the gazette or from someone reading it.

The substance is not the hard part. Displaying odds for paid probabilistic items, in the game and in the advertising, in the prescribed form, is administrative work that most publishers can complete in weeks. The hard part is the address. Every notice in this series was served by public notice for the same reason: there was no domestic party to serve.

What to take from it

  • Check your disclosure element by element. The September citation list is typical: nine in-game items and the website, each a separate finding. A single probability page does not satisfy a rule that is enforced item by item and place by place.
  • If you distribute a localized title in Korea without a Korean address, assume this is how an order would reach you. The domestic-agent question is, in practice, the question of whether a regulator has someone to serve.
  • Watch the gazette. These notices are public the day they are published. Munteok's Korea Regulation Monitor lists each one within a day of publication, with a link to the original.

Munteok provides regulatory information, not legal advice.