Ministry of Government Legislation (law.go.kr) · Korea Workers' Compensation & Welfare Service

Korean Court Precedent Full-Text API (MOLEG + KCOMWEL industrial-accident cases)

Locally built API exposing 35,161 precedents (30,814 with full judgment text), no key required. Provides case-name search (/api/prec?q=), full-text FTS (/api/prec/search?q=), detail (/api/prec/{case_id}), full text (/api/prec/{case_id}/text) and stats (/api/prec/stats). Use case_id as the primary identifier; case numbers may be duplicated.

⚡ Precedent search quick call

GET /api/prec/search?q=severance&limit=5

Use this first for precedent search. q = body FTS; case-name only: /api/prec?q=. No key required, 35,161 cases / 30,814 full texts. Use the returned case_id with /api/prec/{case_id}/text for the judgment text.

What agents get

case name, case number, court, decision date, category, holding, summary, referenced statutes, full judgment text, official source URL (law.go.kr precInfo)
precedent search and citation for labor, real-estate and industrial-accident disputes

Use cases

search severance pay, unfair dismissal, lease and deposit-return precedents
cite judgment text and holdings
look up industrial accident and employment insurance precedents

Registered APIs (5)

Precedent list / case-name search prec_list

q is a case-name LIKE search; use prec_search for body search. Sorted by latest decision date.

q Optional — case-name substring e.g. lease
category Optional — 부동산 / 노동법 / 고용·산재 e.g. 노동법
court Optional e.g. Supreme Court
from Optional — decision date from (YYYY-MM-DD) e.g. 2025-01-01
to Optional — decision date to (YYYY-MM-DD) e.g. 2026-10-21
body Optional — only cases with full text e.g. 1
limit Optional — max 50 e.g. 20
offset Optional e.g. 0

Returns: total, items[](case_id, case_number, court, decision_date, date_known, case_name, category, body_status, text_len, data_source)

Rate limit: 86,400 calls/day (60 requests/min)

Judgment body FTS search prec_search

q is a body keyword (1-50 chars). count = items in this response, total = all matches. Trigram OR may include low-relevance hits.

q Required — body keyword e.g. severance pay
limit Optional — max 30 e.g. 10

Returns: count, total, items[](case_id, case_number, court, decision_date, date_known, case_name, category, body_status, snippet), cached

Rate limit: 86,400 calls/day (60 requests/min)

Precedent detail prec_detail

case_id first; a case number also resolves but may be duplicated.

case_id Required — numeric case_id or case number e.g. 606507

Returns: case_number, court, decision_date, date_known, category, holding, summary, referenced_laws, source_url, body_status, judgment_chars, endpoints{text_json,text_plain}

Rate limit: 86,400 calls/day (60 requests/min)

Judgment full text prec_text

404 body_not_available when the source does not provide the text. No display-length cap.

case_id Required e.g. 606507
format Optional — json or text e.g. json

Returns: case_id, case_number, court, decision_date, date_known, source_url, body_status, chars, text

Rate limit: 86,400 calls/day (60 requests/min)

Corpus stats prec_stats

counts, full-text coverage, characters, per-source counts

Returns: cases, with_text, chars, last_collected_at, sources, db_size_bytes

Rate limit: 86,400 calls/day (60 requests/min)

Auth · pricing · terms

Auth	none — No key required. Served directly from the internal database.
Pricing	free
License	Public data: attribution required
Redistribution	allowed with attribution
Terms checked	2026-10-21
Apply	No key needed — call /api/prec directly Portal
Status	Active
Last checked	2026-10-21

How agents call

Call through our proxy. Start with the keyless quick API shown above (no token needed). For the Korean law service, target=law is served from our internal law DB with no token. For the keyed proxy, send X-Agent-Token to POST /agencatalog/api/call with ('service', 'endpoint', 'params'). Token issuance is not self-service; see /agencatalog/register/. The full service list is at /agencatalog/api/services.json.

Machine-readable JSON schema

{
  "service": "prec-kr",
  "name": "Korean Court Precedent Full-Text API (MOLEG + KCOMWEL industrial-accident cases)",
  "provider": "Ministry of Government Legislation (law.go.kr) · Korea Workers' Compensation & Welfare Service",
  "apis": [
    {
      "id": "prec_list",
      "name": "Precedent list / case-name search",
      "params": [
        {
          "name": "q",
          "required": false,
          "example": "lease",
          "desc": "case-name substring"
        },
        {
          "name": "category",
          "required": false,
          "example": "노동법",
          "desc": "부동산 / 노동법 / 고용·산재"
        },
        {
          "name": "court",
          "required": false,
          "example": "Supreme Court"
        },
        {
          "name": "from",
          "required": false,
          "example": "2025-01-01",
          "desc": "decision date from (YYYY-MM-DD)"
        },
        {
          "name": "to",
          "required": false,
          "example": "2026-10-21",
          "desc": "decision date to (YYYY-MM-DD)"
        },
        {
          "name": "body",
          "required": false,
          "example": "1",
          "desc": "only cases with full text"
        },
        {
          "name": "limit",
          "required": false,
          "example": "20",
          "desc": "max 50"
        },
        {
          "name": "offset",
          "required": false,
          "example": "0"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "prec_search",
      "name": "Judgment body FTS search",
      "params": [
        {
          "name": "q",
          "required": true,
          "example": "severance pay",
          "desc": "body keyword"
        },
        {
          "name": "limit",
          "required": false,
          "example": "10",
          "desc": "max 30"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "prec_detail",
      "name": "Precedent detail",
      "params": [
        {
          "name": "case_id",
          "required": true,
          "example": "606507",
          "desc": "numeric case_id or case number"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "prec_text",
      "name": "Judgment full text",
      "params": [
        {
          "name": "case_id",
          "required": true,
          "example": "606507"
        },
        {
          "name": "format",
          "required": false,
          "example": "json",
          "desc": "json or text"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "prec_stats",
      "name": "Corpus stats",
      "params": []
    }
  ],
  "proxy_call": "POST /agencatalog/api/call",
  "attribution": "Source: law.go.kr (MOLEG) · KCOMWEL industrial-accident precedents"
}

Error handling

All responses are JSON. On failure the proxy returns {"ok": false, "error": {"code", "message"}}. Handle by code:

invalid_token	403. Missing or invalid `X-Agent-Token`. Get a token via /agencatalog/register/ and resend with the header.
throttle	429. One-call-per-second limit exceeded. Wait `retry_after` seconds and retry sequentially (no parallel calls).
agent_limit / institution_limit	429. Daily quota exceeded. Resume after `retry_after_seconds`.
upstream_limit	429. The upstream provider returned an over-quota error. Retry later.
unknown_service	404. Unregistered service. Check the exact service/endpoint name in services.json.
not_found	404. Bad path. Confirm you use `POST /agencatalog/api/call`.

Notes

API keys live only on the server. Clients asking for keys directly cannot use this route.
Each provider has a daily quota. Over-quota calls return 429 and are blocked.
Provider outages or over-quota errors are passed through. Check the error field before retrying.
Attribution: Source: law.go.kr (MOLEG) · KCOMWEL industrial-accident precedents

Last checked: 2026-10-21