Korea Business Registration Status Check – Active, Suspended or Closed

Check whether South Korean businesses are still operating – active, temporarily suspended or closed – and see their VAT tax type, straight from the Korean National Tax Service (NTS). Paste a list of business registration numbers and get clean English results in seconds.

No Korean language skills, no government API key, no scraping.

What you get

• Status: active, suspended, closed or not_registered
• Closing date for closed businesses
• VAT tax type in English (general, simplified, exempt, non-profit…) plus the official code and Korean label
• Tax type history: date of the latest change and the previous type
• checkedAt and source on every row
• Bulk: up to 10,000 numbers per run, checked in batches of 100

Typical uses

• KYB / vendor onboarding: confirm a Korean supplier or customer is a live business before you sign or pay
• CRM hygiene: flag closed companies in your Korean lead list
• Credit and risk checks: spot suspended or recently closed counterparties
• Invoice checks: see whether a business is a general or simplified VAT taxpayer
• AI agents: call it as a tool through the Apify MCP server ("is 124-81-00998 still active?")

Input example

{
  "businessNumbers": ["124-81-00998", "000-00-00000", "12345"]
}

Output example

{
  "businessNumber": "124-81-00998",
  "businessNumberDigits": "1248100998",
  "registered": true,
  "status": "active",
  "statusKo": "계속사업자",
  "closedOn": null,
  "taxType": "General VAT taxpayer",
  "taxTypeCode": "01",
  "taxTypeKo": "부가가치세 일반과세자",
  "taxTypeChangedOn": null,
  "invoiceIssuingSince": null,
  "previousTaxType": null,
  "previousTaxTypeCode": null,
  "closedByUnitTaxConversion": false,
  "checksumValid": true,
  "checkedAt": "2026-09-28T03:00:00Z",
  "source": "Korea National Tax Service, business registration status (data.go.kr 15081808)"
}

Numbers that are not registered return "status": "not_registered". Inputs that are not 10 digits return "status": "invalid_format" and are not charged.

Pricing

$0.002 per business number checked ($2 per 1,000). No start fee. Invalid-format inputs are free.

Data notes

• Source: Korean National Tax Service business registration status service, published on the Korean government open data portal (data.go.kr) under an unrestricted-use license.
• Freshness: live lookup at run time. The NTS syncs its registry about every 30 minutes; brand-new registrations can take 1–2 days to appear.
• Status only: the NTS does not return company names, addresses or owner names through this service, and this Actor does not ask for or return any personal data.
• Business number checksum: checksumValid shows whether the number passes the standard check-digit rule. It is informational; the status always comes from the NTS.

Data sources & license

• Korean National Tax Service – business registration status service (data.go.kr dataset 15081808). Looked up live at run time; the NTS syncs its registry about every 30 minutes, and new registrations can take 1–2 days to appear.
• License: unrestricted use, including commercial use (Korea Public Data Portal).
• Every row includes source and checkedAt.

Related Actors

More official Korean business data from the same publisher:

• Korea Company Search — 550,000+ companies by region, industry, headcount
• Korea New Business Openings — businesses licensed or registered in the last days
• Korea Hiring Signals — companies growing headcount right now

Disclaimer

This Actor is an independent product. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or operated by the Korean government or any of the agencies named above. Data is provided as published by the source, without warranty; English translations and romanized place names are generated automatically and may contain errors. The data is intended for business lookup and prospecting, not as official statistics. No personal contact data (phone numbers, emails) is returned.

FAQ

Where do I find a company's business number? On its invoices, website footer (사업자등록번호) or contracts. It looks like 123-45-67890.

Can I check sole proprietors? Yes. The service works for any business registration number, and only the status is returned.

How fast is it? About 1 second per 100 numbers.