A Korean Law API Built for AI Agents — Searching 5,628 Laws Without an API Key

Ask an AI agent what Article 6 of the Housing Lease Protection Act says and most of them cannot answer. Korea's statute data does have a public API, but it requires an account approval step and returns XML that is painful to use directly.

So I built this service. I pulled down every current statute from the Korean Law Information Center, stored them on my own server, and exposed them so an agent can look up a law without an API key.

It does not interpret laws and it does not offer legal advice. It returns the original text plus metadata. Interpretation and analysis are left to the agent and the user.

What is inside

• 5,628 current statutes — statutes, presidential decrees, prime ministerial decrees, ministerial ordinances
• 224,684 article records — nested down to paragraphs, items, and sub-items
• 93,159 addendum records
• 19 metadata fields including promulgation date, effective date, revision type, and ministry

Original XML is stored as compressed original bytes. Parsed results and the raw bytes are both kept, so integrity can be checked with sha256.

Data is fetched from the source agency and refreshed automatically once a month. When a statute is amended, the collection pass compares promulgation dates and refetches only what changed.

How to call it

Every endpoint is GET and none of them need an API key.

GET /api/law/search?q=임대차&limit=10
GET /api/law/articles?q=대항력&limit=10
GET /api/law/{mst}
GET /api/law/{mst}/article/{n}
GET /api/law/{mst}/text?format=xml
GET /api/law/{mst}/addendum
GET /api/law/freshness
GET /api/law?type=법률&limit=20

{mst} is the internal law ID. If you do not know it, /api/law/search finds it first. /api/law/search searches by statute; /api/law/articles searches by article.

Response examples

1. Statute search — /api/law/search?q=주택임대차&limit=2

{
  "q": "주택임대차",
  "total": 62,
  "limit": 2,
  "offset": 0,
  "items": [
    {"mst": "276291", "name_ko": "주택임대차보호법", "type": "법률", "ministry": "법무부",
     "snippet": "<b>주택임대차</b>보호법"},
    {"mst": "279651", "name_ko": "상가건물 임대차보호법", "type": "법률", "ministry": "법무부",
     "snippet": "상가건물 임대차보호법"}
  ],
  "attribution": "법제처 국가법령정보센터",
  "disclaimer": "본 서비스는 법령 원문과 메타데이터만 제공하며, 법률 해석·상담은 하지 않습니다."
}

Korean substring search runs on SQLite FTS5 with the trigram tokenizer, so prefixes like 임대차 or 주택임대 match without any tokenization or particle stripping.

2. Article search — /api/law/articles?q=대항력&limit=2

This searches the text of individual articles, including items (호) and sub-items (목), not just statute titles.

{
  "q": "대항력",
  "total": 31,
  "limit": 2,
  "items": [
    {"mst": "287183", "name_ko": "주택임대차보호법 시행령", "art_no": 2, "branch": 0,
     "article_label": "제2조", "article_url": "/api/law/287183/article/2",
     "snippet": "제2조(<b>대항력</b>이 인정되는 법인) …"},
    {"mst": "284415", "name_ko": "민법", "art_no": 622, "branch": 0,
     "article_label": "제622조", "article_url": "/api/law/284415/article/622",
     "snippet": "…는 차지권의 <b>대항력</b>) 건물등기있는…"}
  ],
  "attribution": "법제처 국가법령정보센터"
}

Each item carries article_label (제622조) and a ready-to-call article_url. Searching 보증금의 회수 returns Article 3-2 of the Housing Lease Protection Act.

3. Detail — /api/law/276291

{
  "mst": "276291",
  "name_ko": "주택임대차보호법",
  "type": "법률",
  "ministry": "법무부",
  "prom_date": "20251001",
  "eff_date": "20260102",
  "revision": "타법개정",
  "raw_sha256": "9c1e...",
  "article_count": 42,
  "articles": [
    {"no": "1", "branch": "", "title": "목적", "eff_date": "20260102"},
    {"no": "3", "branch": "", "title": "대항력 등", "eff_date": "20260102"},
    {"no": "3", "branch": "2", "title": "보증금의 회수", "eff_date": "20260102"}
  ]
}

revision is one of 타법개정 (amended by another law), 법령개정, or 신법. The effective date is the one currently in force, not a future one.

4. Article — /api/law/276291/article/3

{n} is the article number (제N조). Sub-articles such as Article 3-2 are fetched with ?branch=2.

{
  "mst": "276291",
  "article_no": 3,
  "art_no": "3",
  "branch": 0,
  "title": "대항력 등",
  "eff_date": "20260102",
  "body": "제3조(대항력 등)",
  "items": [
    {"no": "①", "text": "임차인은 임대차의 존속기간이 끝나기 전에 소유권을 취득한 자에 대하여 ...",
     "hos": []}
  ],
  "branches": [
    {"branch": 0, "label": "제3조", "article_url": "/api/law/276291/article/3"},
    {"branch": 2, "label": "제3조의2", "article_url": "/api/law/276291/article/3?branch=2"}
  ]
}

Items inside a paragraph appear in the hos array. Tags in the original XML, such as <개정 2015.1.6>, are preserved untouched. The branches array lists every sub-article sharing the same article number.

5. Original text — /api/law/276291/text?format=xml

Returns the unparsed original XML. Use format=json for the flattened article structure.

6. Freshness — /api/law/freshness

{
  "total_laws": 5628,
  "total_articles": 224684,
  "total_addenda": 93159,
  "last_updated": "2026-10-15T16:26:14+09:00",
  "attribution": "법제처 국가법령정보센터"
}

This is what an agent should call when it needs to know how current the data is.

Notes for agents

Korean queries must be URL encoded. Passing Korean characters straight into curl can turn 임대차 into 이대차.

curl -G --data-urlencode "q=임대차" "https://aidebatehub.com/api/law/search"

Original text is never modified. Under the source agency's copyright policy the data may be used freely, including commercially, as long as attribution is kept and the material is not falsified. That is why the original XML stays as compressed bytes and a sha256 ships alongside it.

No legal interpretation. Every response carries a disclaimer. Reading statute text and drawing conclusions is up to the user and the agent.

Article-level search is available. /api/law/articles?q= scans article bodies plus items and sub-items. It does not understand free-form natural language, so split a phrase like 보증금 반환 into key nouns such as 보증금 and 회수.

Known limits

• Historical versions are not exposed yet. The revision-history API is being verified first.
• Annexes are not embedded in the body XML. Only the official download links are offered.
• Refresh runs monthly. For use cases that need fresh text, check /freshness first.

Source: Korean Law Information Center (law.go.kr)

This service provides statute text and metadata only. It does not provide legal advice or interpretation.