Who Rates Korea's Games? GRAC Hands Mobile Ratings to a Private Committee

Korea's games regulator was born out of a gambling scandal. In the mid-2000s, an arcade machine called Sea Story was rated suitable for all ages and went on to become the centre of a national gambling crisis and misconduct allegations. The government's answer, in 2006, was a new body whose only job was rating games.

Twenty years later, that body is giving much of the job away. From November 2, 2026, all rating work for mobile games in Korea moves from the Game Rating and Administration Committee (GRAC) to a private body, the Game Content Rating Committee, which sits under the Game Culture Foundation.

What changed on November 2

GRAC, chaired by Seo Tae-geon, signed the extra entrustment contract on October 23, 2026, and announced it on October 29. The new committee, chaired by Lee Seung-hoon, now handles all mobile game ratings and content-modification declarations, the filings a company makes when it changes a rated game. Mobile games filed with GRAC up to October 31 are finished by GRAC.

Two things stay with the regulator: arcade games and simulated gambling games, such as card and Go-Stop titles. Given where GRAC came from, that is not a surprise.

This is the second step. On October 24, 2025, GRAC signed a first contract with the same foundation. From November 1, 2025, ratings for adults-only PC and console games moved to the private committee, with modification declarations following from December 1, 2025. That entrustment runs until May 22, 2030.

The Blue Archive moment

The push to shrink GRAC has a clear turning point. In autumn 2022, about a year after launch, GRAC raised Nexon's mobile game Blue Archive from 15+ to not for minors. At a press briefing on November 10, 2022, it said the game showed female characters' body exposure and implied sexual acts, and it recommended upgrades for Fate/Grand Order and Girls' Frontline on similar grounds.

Players saw the decisions as sudden and the standards as out of date. GRAC promised to publish meeting minutes, hold a meeting with players and grow its reclassification subcommittee from three to five members, adding two outside game experts. Its chair at the time, Kim Gyu-cheol, said he could not claim GRAC was fully objective.

Another problem then surfaced. According to the office of lawmaker Lee Sang-heon, who proposed an audit of the board, a rating-management system project from 2017 had cost ₩3.88 billion and was still partly unfinished, and GRAC had not sought compensation from the vendor in 2019.

From reform to abolition talk

By 2025 the debate had moved from fixing GRAC to replacing it. In June 2025, reports said the new government might abolish it. On September 24, 2025, lawmaker Cho Seung-rae proposed a full rewrite of the game law that would do just that.

The cost to small developers was a sore point too. In October 2025, lawmaker Jung Yeon-wook criticised review fees for indie games as higher than those for the film Avatar.

What's next

The transfers rest on an amendment to the Game Industry Promotion Act, and officials have said more could follow under the government's comprehensive game promotion plan. With adults-only PC and console games and now all mobile games handled privately, GRAC is moving toward a narrower role: arcades, gambling-style games and enforcement.

WGC's take: private rating can be faster and closer to how games are actually made, which matters most to small studios. The test is whether the new committee is more consistent than the old one. Players will remember Blue Archive, and they will be watching.

For the story of an older Korean game rule that went the same way, read about the Cinderella shutdown law, and for another long-running policy fight, see Korea's debate over a gaming-disorder disease code.