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[ADRN Working Paper] Mapping East Asian Initiatives on AI Governance for Democracy (Part 7~11)
Asia Democracy Research Network

Editor's Note

The Asia Democracy Research Network (ADRN) conducted comparative research on AI governance in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, recognizing the growing need to examine how these three East Asian democracies are confronting AI-driven threats to democratic institutions. The report offers a wide-ranging analysis of legislative frameworks, public and civil-service engagement with AI, and cross-country policy responses across ten thematic domains. Its findings highlight both the distinct trajectories these democracies have taken and the gaps that remain, providing a foundation for informed dialogue on safeguarding democratic resilience amid the rise of artificial intelligence.

Media

 

AI is increasingly affecting the role of the media as a watchdog of power, particularly through its implications for copyright protection and the public’s right to know. However, adequate measures to ensure the sustainability of news organizations remain limited. Different challenges and responses have emerged across countries, including technological and fact-checking initiatives in Japan and regulatory gaps in the governance of new media in South Korea. Taiwan, meanwhile, has explored a different direction. After the failure of comprehensive platform regulation, legislative discussions have shifted toward a bargaining framework between news organizations and digital platforms. Yet the feasibility of this approach remains uncertain.

 

1. Japan

 

1.1. Concerns about AI

 

Japanese news organizations have expressed sustained concern about the impact of generative AI on copyright, business sustainability, and the public’s right to know. Statements issued by the Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association since 2023 point to confusion in the information space, privacy concerns, deficiencies in existing legal frameworks, and a lack of transparency (Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association 2023). The Association argues that the unauthorized use of news content in generative AI systerns threatens the economic foundations of journalism and may reduce the availability of high-quality reporting that supports democratic processes. It maintains that news content constitutes intellectual property created through significant labor and cost, and that generative AI developers and service providers should obtain authorization and provide compensation when using such content. Although recent policy discussions and interpretative guidance on copyright and AI have clarified some issues, the Association (Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association 2024) considers existing protections insufficient and has called for legislative reform rather than reliance on interpretation alone.

 

Concerns have intensified (Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association 2025) with the expansion of retrieval-augmented generation and “zero-click search,” in which users rely on AI-generated summaries without accessing original news sources. News organizations warn that such practices may reproduce articles without authorization, generate inaccurate outputs, and erode the credibility of original reporting. Litigation has followed these concerns: in August 2025, Yomiuri Shimbun (Yomiuri Shimbun 2025), followed by Nikkei and Asahi (Nikkei 2025a), filed lawsuits against Perplexity alleging copyright infringement. These cases highlight perceived gaps in copyright law and the uncertainty surrounding statutory exceptions, particularly provisions allowing certain uses without authorization.

 

1.2. Countermeasures and Their Limitations

 

Alongside legal advocacy, media organizations have pursued technical and institutional responses to protect information integrity. Many have participated in the development of OP (Originator Profile) technology[1], which embeds verified originator information into online content to strengthen traceability and authenticity. Fact-checking efforts have also expanded. In 2025, news organizations began coordinated fact-checking (Yomiuri Shimbun 2025) during elections with the cooperation of JFC, and more than 200 fact-check articles were published during the House of Councillors election in 2025 (NHK 2025).

 

However, empirical findings suggest limitations. Surveys indicate that a high proportion of individuals who encountered widely circulated false information during elections in 2025 (NHK 2025) and in 2026 (Jiji Press 2026) believed it to be true, and television remained a major exposure channel. This indicates that reporting on misinformation may inadvertently contribute to its wider recognition, while public trust in traditional media has been challenged in an attention-driven information environment.

 

The Japanese news industry frames generative AI as posing intertwined risks to copyright protection, economic sustainability, and democratic information functions. While advocating stronger legal safeguards, media organizations are also investing in authentication technologies and fact-checking initiatives. Structural challenges remain, including legal ambiguity, platform practices, and the difficulty of countering misinformation without amplifying it.

 

2. South Korea

 

2.1. Traditional Media and AI

 

Traditional media is actively integrating AI while striving to fulfill its public mandate of providing essential information for democracy. To uphold journalistic integrity, public and private sector entities, such as Korea Press Foundation and various press outlets, are collaboratively and individually establishing AI journalism guidelines (Kang 2024) and ethical standards. However, intensifying copyright disputes remains a critical burden. Despite the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism’s interpretation (Lim 2025) that unauthorized AI summarization constitutes infringement, the government's "use-first, compensate-later" approach has fueled significant friction (Yoo 2026). This conflict is exemplified by the collective lawsuit (Choi 2025) from the three major broadcasting companies against Naver, highlighting the struggle over the fair valuation of journalistic assets in the AI era.

 

2.2. The Regulatory Vacuum in New Media

 

Even with the AI Basic Act, a regulatory vacuum persists in the digital sphere. Current legislation (National AI Strategy Committee 2025) focuses on imposing mandates primarily on AI developers and service providers, failing to hold accountable the actual content producers, including news outlets and high-impact YouTubers, who create AI-driven narratives. This gap significantly hinders information transparency. Moreover, while global platforms bear the ability to trap citizens in a polarized environment with engagement-based algorithms exacerbating the echo chamber effect, they lack direct responsibility for the AI-generated content they distribute. Specifically, current safe harbor provisions (National Assembly 2025) allow these intermediaries to avoid proactive liability, while their limited cooperation with domestic investigations, hesitating to provide subscriber data for disinformation cases, further complicates legal efforts to identify and penalize malicious actors.

 

While Korea’s push for AI journalism ethics signals an institutional commitment, this integrity remains functionally hollow without the infrastructure of enforceable copyright protections, leaving traditional media to bear the disproportionate burden of maintaining high editorial standards without sufficient legal recourse. On the other hand, the regulatory gap is also prominent in new media, focusing primarily on AI developers while allowing safe harbor protections to shield platforms. Ultimately, Korea’s media governance finds itself caught between high-level ambition and structural permissiveness. Closing this divide will require a paradigm shift that extends legal and ethical accountability beyond the technology's developers to include both the platforms and the content producers themselves.

 

3. Taiwan

 

3.1. Challenges for Traditional News Media

 

Taiwan’s news industry has become heavily dependent on multinational digital platforms such as Google and Meta for both distribution channels and advertising revenue. In 2021, the Legislative Yuan raised concerns that large digital platforms benefit from news content without fairly sharing the resulting advertising value with news organizations, placing traditional media under growing economic pressure (Tsai et al. 2025). China Times reported that, of Taiwan’s digital advertising market, worth approximately NT$61 billion (US$1.87 billion), Google and Meta together account for NT$40–50 billion (US$1.23–1.54 billion), thereby placing significant pressure on media management (Zhuge 2025).

 

This pressure has been further intensified by the spread of generative AI. According to United Daily News (Yu 2026) and The Reporter (Hsieh and Chien 2026), since the introduction of Google’s AI Overview, more users have begun leaving search results pages after reading AI-generated summaries alone, and some news websites have experienced declining click-through rates. Moreover, since generative AI can learn from large volumes of news content and produce summaries, rewrites, and personalized articles, it may increasingly become a central intermediary in the circulation of news. As AI agents come to read across multiple articles and generate responses tailored to users’ requests, audiences may encounter not original reporting itself, but secondary information reconstituted by AI, thereby further destabilizing the business foundations of news organizations.

 

In addition, in the Excellent Journalism Electronic Newsletter (Chen 2026), Lin Yu-Pen argues that news media are increasingly compelled to adjust headlines and content formats to platform preferences in order to secure visibility. As a result, adaptation to algorithms tends to take precedence over public value and professional editorial judgment, constituting a structural constraint on media autonomy.

 

3.2. The Failure of Comprehensive Regulation

 

In response to these developments, the need for digital platform regulation has been recognized in Taiwan. In June 2022, the National Communications Commission (NCC) released a draft of the Digital Intermediary Services Act (National Communications Commission 2022), conceived as a Taiwanese counterpart to the EU’s Digital Services Act (Institute of Geoeconomics 2024), with the aim of comprehensively regulating platform accountability, transparency, and responses to illegal content. However, the draft encountered strong resistance from businesses and industry groups because of the breadth of its regulatory scope (Chohan 2022). It also triggered substantial public opposition: on JOIN[2], 38,795 users expressed opposition, compared to only 163 in support. In particular, provisions that would allow the removal of information or restriction of access generated serious concerns regarding freedom of expression. As a result, in early September 2022, the NCC suspended the legislative process and returned the draft to a working group for further review. In effect, Taiwan’s attempt to introduce a comprehensive platform regulation law came to a halt.

 

3.3. The Shift to Bargaining Act

 

Following the failure of comprehensive regulation, debate in Taiwan has increasingly shifted toward institutionalizing compensation for the use of news content. According to the Taipei Times (Shan 2025) and United Daily News (Li and Tang 2025), in 2025 the Legislative Yuan began deliberating a proposed News Media and Digital Platform Bargaining Draft Act that would require major digital platforms to negotiate with news organizations over the benefits generated by the use of news content (Lin et al. 2025). At the June 2025 public hearing on media bargaining legislation, it was confirmed that the KMT, DPP, andTPP had each submitted their own draft bills. MODA, however, adopted a cautious position, noting that such legislation could be interpreted by the United States as a trade barrier. At the same time, China Times reported that Zhuge Jun as arguing that the scope of the proposed bargaining framework should extend beyond Google and Meta to include generative AI companies as well (Zhuge 2025). Economic Daily News further reported that, as of March 2026, the government was still considering how to incorporate generative AI firms’ use of news content into a broader framework of licensing, compensation, and revenue-sharing arrangements (Yu 2026).

 


 

[]Originator Profile Collaborative Innovation Partnership (OP-CIP), https://originator-profile.org/en-US/.

 

[2]Public consultation on the Draft Act on Digital Intermediary Services, National Communications Commission (NCC), Taiwan, June 29–August 29, 2022. https://join.gov.tw/policies/detail/43dbdcc4-af21-4fcb-9173-d3b5993ab88d.