SEOUL, Nov. 2 (Yonhap) -- The Korea Choreography Copyright Association said Monday that Universal Content Identifiers (UCI) have been issued for 5,000 choreography works for the first time in South Korea.
UCI is a national standard identification number based on the Content Industry Promotion Act and serves as a unique ID assigned to each piece of content. The 5,000 works include choreography uploaded to the YouTube channel of renowned dance team 1MILLION.
The association said the issuance of UCI for choreography will make it possible to track where and how choreography is used and lay the groundwork for distributing revenue accordingly.
The UCI issuance was carried out as part of the "Global Rights Acquisition through K-Dance Metadata Standardization and New UCI Registration" project, jointly undertaken by the association and WITS Co. under a 2026 support program led by the Korea Copyright Commission to promote and expand UCI use and develop utilization models.
Through the project, the association established a UCI-based system for identifying and registering choreography content, linked data with platforms including broadcasters, over-the-top (OTT) services and short-form platforms, and built systems for analyzing usage records and automatically settling payments.
The association plans to work with the Korea Copyright Commission and industry stakeholders to address issues including accurate registration of rights information, distribution of rights among multiple copyright holders and ensuring transparency across diversified distribution channels.
"Choreography has become one of the most widely consumed forms of content worldwide through K-pop and short-form videos, but in most cases, even the identity of the person who created it has not been recorded," said Kim Hye-rang, chairwoman of the Korea Choreography Copyright Association. "The issuance of UCI marks the first time choreography has been given a name tag and serves as a starting point for choreographers to assert legitimate rights over their creations."
[Copyright ⓒ K-VIBE. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction and redistribution are prohibited.]
