IROS, DART and Hometax: which Korean registry you actually need
Updated
Searching for how to look up a Korean company turns up three names — IROS, DART and Hometax — with little explanation of how they differ. They are run by three different institutions, hold three different kinds of record, and cover three different populations of company. Picking the wrong one is why people conclude a real company does not exist.
| System | Run by | Answers |
|---|---|---|
| Hometax | National Tax Service | Is this business registered and still trading? |
| IROS | Supreme Court | Who are the directors? What is the capital? |
| DART | Financial Supervisory Service | What has this listed company disclosed? |
Hometax — tax registration status
Hometax is the National Tax Service’s portal. Its business status lookup takes a ten-digit 사업자등록번호 and returns whether the business is trading, suspended or closed, plus its VAT category.
- Covers: every registered business in Korea, including sole traders.
- Cost: free.
- Language: Korean. There is no English interface for this lookup.
This is the broadest coverage of the three and the right starting point for almost every buyer. Because the underlying data is published as open data, it can be queried in English — that is what the status check on this site does.
IROS — the commercial register
IROS, the Internet Registry Office, holds the court’s commercial register. The corporate registry extract (법인등기부등본) is the authoritative record of a company’s legal existence: incorporation date, registered address, paid-in capital, directors, and every change to those over time.
- Covers: incorporated companies only. Sole traders do not appear.
- Cost: a small fee per document.
- Language: Korean.
- Keyed on: the thirteen-digit 법인등록번호, not the tax number.
Use IROS when you need to know who actually controls a company, or when you need a document with legal standing rather than a screen result — for a bank, a lawyer or a court. It is the only one of the three that tells you who the directors are.
DART — disclosures from listed and large companies
DART is the Financial Supervisory Service’s electronic disclosure system: annual reports, audited statements, material events. Filings appear the same day they are submitted and the archive runs back to the late 1990s. There is an English version, though the underlying documents are frequently Korean.
- Covers: listed companies and large filers — a small fraction of Korean businesses.
- Cost: free.
- Language: partial English.
DART is superb when your counterparty is a large or listed company and close to useless when it is a mid-sized manufacturer. Finding nothing there says almost nothing about the company.
Which one for which situation
| Your situation | Go to |
|---|---|
| A new supplier wants a deposit | Tax status first, then financials |
| Signing a contract or opening credit | IROS extract, for directors and capital |
| Counterparty is a listed conglomerate | DART |
| Supplier has gone quiet | Tax status — check for 폐업 |
| Confirming a sole trader | Tax status only; the others hold nothing |
The language problem, honestly stated
Every source above is designed for Korean users, and the two with the broadest coverage have no English interface for the lookups that matter. That is the real obstacle for overseas buyers, and it is why so many end up paying a due-diligence firm for a check that is free.
Where the underlying data is published as open data, it can be presented in English directly — which is what this site does for tax registration status and for filed financial statements. For anything requiring a stamped court document, IROS remains the source, and a Korean-speaking agent is usually the practical route.
For the full picture of what to check and in what order, see how to verify a Korean company.
Start with tax status — it covers every business and costs nothing.
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