@pipeworx/kr-law

South Korean national statutes: search by title, fetch one article (조문) at a time with its own effective date, and a statute's revision history. Bring your own OC (Open API user id) — every call runs on your own registration.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1815+ live data sources. This is an independent, unofficial integration — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the upstream provider.

Tools

• kr_law_search(...) — find statutes by title keyword. Returns each match's mst (the version id every other tool needs), ministry, promulgation/effective dates, and whether it's the current or a superseded version.

• kr_law_article(...) — fetch ONE article by mst + article_no (e.g. "5" or "4-2" for 제4조의2). Never the whole law body. Omit article_no for a paginated table of contents (numbers + titles) instead. Returns the article's own text, its paragraphs (항) and items (호), and its own effective date — which can differ from the law's own when only that article was later amended.

• kr_law_history(...) — revision history for a statute: every promulgation with its own promulgation date/number and entry-into-force date, each a separate historical mst you can pass back to kr_law_article.

Related MCP server: LexLink

Auth

BYO only, and will stay that way. Every tool requires _apiKey — your own OC from https://open.law.go.kr/LSO/main.do (로그인 → OPEN API → OPEN API 신청). With no key, every tool refuses before any network call, naming the argument and where to register.

Registering an OC requires Korean real-name verification — a Korean mobile-carrier identity check or an i-PIN. There is no alien-registration, passport, or overseas-signup path on the Ministry's own form. Pipeworx has no Korean-resident staff and cannot complete either method, so there is no platform key for this pack and none is coming (ruled, fleet #3128, 2026-10-15).

For a quick smoke test only (never use this as a real credential, and never rely on it being stable), the Ministry's own public demo id "test" works for kr_law_search and kr_law_article.

kr_law_history needs a service your OC may not have by default. Even a real, verified OC must separately enable 법령연혁 (law history) under My Applications on the open.law.go.kr dashboard (OPEN API → 신청내역 → check the 법령종류 box). An OC without it gets a specific, named error from this tool rather than a generic failure — follow the steps the error gives. The public demo id does not have this entitlement at all.

Data sources

• Ministry of Government Legislation (법제처), National Law Information Center Open API — South Korea's official statute database (law, cabinet order, and ministerial-ordinance text, with promulgation and entry-into-force dates and revision history).

Known gaps and gotchas

• Korean-language text only. No translation is attempted or labelled official. The Ministry does not publish an official English statute text through this API.

• kr_law_history's success shape is unproven against a live call — no OC entitled to the history service was available while building this pack. The error path (an OC without that entitlement) is proven live and is what most callers without a premium/full registration will actually see. Flag this if it ever drifts from the documented row shape.

• article_no branch numbering: Korean statutes insert new articles between existing ones as "제4조의2" rather than renumbering everything — pass that as "4-2". kr_law_article with no article_no lists every valid value for a given mst.

• A law's own 시행일자 (effective date) and one specific article's 조문시행일자 can differ — an amendment sometimes only moves one article's effective date forward. Both are returned, kept separate.

• www.law.go.kr is itself Cloudflare-fronted and intermittently answers a legitimate request with HTTP 522/524/503 (measured live, 2026-10-15: 1 of 20 real calls). Every tool retries up to 3 times with backoff before giving up; if the origin is still down after that, the error says plainly that Korea's law service did not respond and to try again — never a bare Cloudflare status code or its "error code: 5xx" body text.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "kr-law": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/kr-law/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/kr-law/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth, connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1815+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

No MCP client? Call it over HTTP

This pack takes your own API key (_apiKey) — we don't front one for it, so there's no curl here that would run without it. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/kr_law_search. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.

Standalone (no gateway account)

This package also runs as a local stdio MCP server — no Pipeworx account, no gateway round-trip:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "kr-law": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-kr-law"]
    }
  }
}

Or run it directly to confirm it starts:

npx -y @pipeworx/mcp-kr-law

It speaks MCP over stdin/stdout and answers initialize/tools/list/tools/call for only this pack's tools — none of the shared meta-tools the gateway connection above adds. Same source, same tools, no ask_pipeworx routing.

Using with ask_pipeworx

Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Kr Law data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides

• pipeworx.io

License

MIT