Korea Business Verify (KBV)

Korea Business Verify (KBV) — MCP Server

KBV is a hosted MCP server that finds and verifies Korean businesses in real time — about 10 free calls/day, then pay-per-call (x402).

You only need the company name. Search "Samsung Electronics" — in English or Korean — and KBV returns the matching companies with their 10-digit business registration numbers (사업자등록번호), ranked by confidence. That matters because every other Korean business API assumes you already have the number, which a foreign agent almost never does. The index covers 940,000 companies: every DART disclosure filer (with English names) plus every vendor registered for public procurement, so small businesses are in it too, not just conglomerates.

With a number in hand, KBV returns registration status (active / suspended / closed), tax type, and — optionally — whether the number matches a representative name and opening date. Data comes live from the Korea National Tax Service (NTS) and is returned as clean, English-normalized JSON.

Shipping goods into Korea? Give KBV a 10-digit HS code (or up to 100 of them) and it returns what Korean customs requires before clearance: the statutes, the agencies that can approve, the certificate to obtain, and each requirement's condition quoted from the governing notice — see Import requirements.

No account, no API key, no installation — connect any MCP-capable agent to one URL:

https://kbv-server-f7vfitmlkq-du.a.run.app/mcp

Built for AI agents and developers doing KYB / due-diligence on Korean companies: procurement, contracting, payments, marketplace onboarding.

Quick facts

Connect your agent

Claude (claude.ai)

1. Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector
2. URL: https://kbv-server-f7vfitmlkq-du.a.run.app/mcp
3. Enable the connector in a chat and ask: *"Check the status of Korean business 124-81-00998."*

Claude Code (CLI)

claude mcp add --transport http kbv https://kbv-server-f7vfitmlkq-du.a.run.app/mcp

ChatGPT

1. Settings → Connectors (requires a plan with connector / developer-mode support)
2. Add a custom MCP connector with URL https://kbv-server-f7vfitmlkq-du.a.run.app/mcp
3. Enable it in a conversation and ask about a Korean business number.

Cursor

Add to .cursor/mcp.json (project) or ~/.cursor/mcp.json (global):

{

"mcpServers": { "korea-business-verify": { "url": "https://kbv-server-f7vfitmlkq-du.a.run.app/mcp" } } }

Any other MCP client

Use transport Streamable HTTP with the endpoint above. Clients must send Accept: application/json, text/event-stream (standard MCP clients do this automatically). Opening /mcp in a browser returns Method not allowed by design — browsers send GET, MCP uses POST. Use /health for a visual liveness check.

Tools

find_korean_business

Find a company by name when you do not know its registration number — the starting point for everything else here.

Input:

{ "name": "Samsung Electronics" }

Output (real example, abbreviated) — candidates, never one confident guess:

{

"query": "Samsung Electronics", "candidates": [ { "business_number": "1248100998", "name": "삼성전자", "name_en": "SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO,.LTD", "confidence": 1, "match": { "type": "exact", "field": "name_en" }, "evidence": { "status": "active", "tax_type": "general", "listed": true } }, { "business_number": "6178117517", "name": "삼성전자판매", "confidence": 0.75, "match": { "type": "prefix", "field": "name" }, "evidence": { "status": "active", "tax_type": "general", "listed": false } } ], "note": "4 companies match this name equally well; they are distinct legal entities. Compare the evidence fields before acting." }

• Korean or English. Legal-form noise is ignored: Samsung Electronics, SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO,.LTD and 삼성전자(주) all match the same company.
• `confidence` reflects how the name matched (exact > prefix > contains), nudged by source and listing status. match tells you which field matched, so the score is never a black box.
• `evidence` is what separates similarly named companies: live registration status, tax type, region (city/district), and whether the company is listed.
• A name can be ambiguous — "Samsung Electronics" legitimately matches four distinct legal entities. KBV returns them all with a note rather than picking one.
• No match returns `candidates: []` with a note saying so. That is an answer, not an error: a lookup failure returns HTTP 503 with an error field instead.

check_korean_business_status

Check the registration status of a Korean business by its 10-digit business registration number.

Input — hyphens/spaces allowed; normalized internally:

{ "business_number": "124-81-00998" }

Output (real example — Samsung Electronics):

{

"business_number": "1248100998", "status": "active", "status_code_raw": "01", "tax_type": "general", "closed_date": null, "checked_at": "2026-08-24T10:08:20.082Z", "source": "Korea National Tax Service (NTS)", "cache": false }

Field reference:

• status: active | suspended | closed | not_registered
• tax_type: general | simplified | exempt | non_profit | unknown
• closed_date: ISO date ("2023-01-31"), only for closed businesses, otherwise null
• checked_at: ISO 8601 UTC timestamp of the NTS query
• cache: true only when the NTS API was temporarily unavailable and a cached result (max 24 h old) was served; checked_at then reflects the original fetch time

A number that is well-formed but not registered with the NTS returns "status": "not_registered" (not an error).

check_korean_business_batch

Check up to 100 businesses in a single call — for screening supplier or customer lists without 100 round-trips.

Input:

{ "business_numbers": ["124-81-00998", "220-81-62517"] }

Output — one entry per input number (order preserved, same schema as above) plus a summary:

{

"results": [ { "business_number": "1248100998", "status": "active", "...": "..." }, { "business_number": "2208162517", "status": "active", "...": "..." } ], "summary": { "total": 2, "active": 2, "suspended": 0, "closed": 0, "not_registered": 0 } }

• Each entry also carries `sanctions` — public-procurement debarments (부정당업자 제재) on record for that company, with active marking one in force today. A company can be perfectly active and still barred from public contracts, and summary.sanctioned counts how many of your list are. An empty array means screened and clear; the field being absent means this server has no debarment data loaded — not the same thing.
• The whole batch is answered with one upstream NTS query.
• Numbers checked within the last 24 hours may be served from cache (marked "cache": true with their original checked_at) and are excluded from the upstream query.
• More than 100 numbers, or any malformed number, is rejected before anything is queried.

verify_korean_business

Verify that a business registration number matches the provided representative name and opening date (KYB identity check), and get the current status in the same call.

Input:

{

"business_number": "124-81-00998", "representative_name": "홍길동", "opening_date": "1969-01-13", "address": "경기도 수원시" }

• representative_name and opening_date (YYYY-MM-DD) are required.
• address is optional and improves match precision.
• Names and addresses should be given as registered with the NTS (Korean script).

Output — same schema as above plus identity_match:

{

"business_number": "1248100998", "status": "active", "status_code_raw": "01", "tax_type": "general", "closed_date": null, "checked_at": "2026-08-24T10:08:23.483Z", "source": "Korea National Tax Service (NTS)", "cache": false, "identity_match": false }

identity_match is true only when the NTS confirms that the number, representative name, and opening date all match its records.

check_korea_import_requirements

What Korean customs requires before it will clear a product, by its 10-digit Korean HS (HSK) code. Goods that need an approval they do not have are held or returned at the border.

Input:

{ "hs_code": "8516710000", "direction": "import" }

• hs_code: 10 digits; dots, hyphens and spaces are fine. 6 digits returns the 10-digit codes under that subheading to choose from — requirements differ between them, so KBV does not guess.
• direction: "import" (default, goods entering Korea) or "export".
• Invalid codes are refused before any lookup or payment (400 hs_code_not_found). An unknown code is never answered as "no requirements".
• `8516710000` (coffee makers) is a free test code: full response, no allowance used — three statutes and five alternative agencies in one answer.

Output (abridged from the real response for 8516710000):

{

"hs_code": "8516710000", "item_name_en": "Coffee or tea makers", "hs_code_valid": true, "requirements_checked": true, "has_requirements": true, "requirement_count": 3, "requirements": [ { "statute_name_en": "Electrical Appliances and Consumer Products Safety Control Act", "statute_name_ko": "전기용품 및 생활용품 안전관리법", "certificate_name_ko": "전기용품 및 생활용품 요건확인서", "certificate_name_en": null, "certificate_name_en_unofficial": "Requirement confirmation for electrical appliances and consumer products", "approving