On August 26, 2026, South Korea's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) promulgated Notice No. 2026-457, a partial amendment to the Regulations on Aviation Medical Certification that brings the country's overall aeromedical examination system into line with ICAO international standards. Issued by MOLIT's Aviation Qualification and International Cooperation Team, the notice revises the aero-medical examination standards and certification procedures that apply to Korean aviation personnel.
For compliance leads at Korean carriers and the designated aviation medical examiners (AMEs) who screen their crews, this is the live instrument to update against. It changes how medical fitness is assessed and certified under the Aviation Safety Act framework, and it reaches foreign operators with Korea-based flight crew.
Who has to apply the amended aviation medical standards?
The amended regulations bind aviation personnel whose medical certificates are issued or validated under Korean rules, and the organisations that examine them. In practice that means Korean air operators, from full-service carriers such as Korean Air and Asiana to the low-cost carrier fleet, together with the designated AMEs and medical facilities that conduct aero-medical examinations on MOLIT's behalf. Foreign operators with flight crew based in South Korea fall within scope where those crew rely on Korean-issued or Korean-validated medical certificates.
The Korea Office of Civil Aviation (KOCA), MOLIT's technical civil-aviation authority, administers the certification workflow day to day. Compliance teams should treat the notice as the current benchmark: medical examiners and operator medical departments must align their examination standards and their certificate-issue and renewal procedures to the amended text, not to the prior version of the regulation.
What changes in the aeromedical examination and certification workflow?
The notice frames the amendment as an ICAO alignment of the aviation medical examination system as a whole. In substance, it revises the aero-medical examination standards that examiners apply when assessing a crew member's medical fitness, and the certification procedures that govern how a medical certificate is issued, renewed, validated or, where applicable, limited or revoked. South Korea is a Chicago Convention Contracting State, so the alignment tracks ICAO's personnel-licensing medical provisions rather than any external regional regime.
The detailed article-by-article changes sit in the notice's attachments, not its body. MOLIT published three alongside Notice 2026-457: the full final amendment text, an article-by-article amendment rationale, and the regulatory review confirmation certificate issued by the Regulatory Reform Committee. That certificate confirms the amendment cleared Korea's mandatory regulatory review gate before promulgation. Compliance teams should read the amendment rationale to see exactly which standards and procedures moved, then confirm that internal medical-screening protocols, examiner delegations and certificate-validity tracking reflect the new text.
How does the amendment fit Korea's aviation safety framework?
The amendment sits in the lower tier of Korea's civil-aviation hierarchy. The Aviation Safety Act and its Enforcement Decree confer MOLIT's statutory powers over airworthiness, aircraft operation and personnel licensing; the Regulations on Aviation Medical Certification sit at the enforcement-rule and public-notice level, where MOLIT fixes the technical medical standards a gosi can bindingly set within its delegated scope. Notice 2026-457 amends that instrument, and a gosi is binding within that delegated scope once published.
| Dimension | Detail |
|---|---|
| Issuer | MOLIT, Aviation Qualification and International Cooperation Team |
| Instrument | MOLIT Notice No. 2026-457 (a binding gosi) |
| Subject | Regulations on Aviation Medical Certification, partial amendment |
| Dated | August 26, 2026 |
| Purpose | Align aeromedical exam standards and certification procedures with ICAO |
| Technical authority | Korea Office of Civil Aviation (KOCA), under MOLIT |
| Statutory basis | Aviation Safety Act framework |
Continuous, per-jurisdiction real-time monitoring surfaces this kind of change the moment a ministry publishes it, so a medical-compliance team is never working from a superseded rule.
Take advantage of this real-time watch
What should compliance teams do next?
Three actions close the loop. First, confirm applicability: check whether your crews hold Korean-issued or Korean-validated medical certificates, and whether your examiners are MOLIT-designated. Second, read the attached article-by-article amendment rationale against your current medical-screening protocols, and update any examination standards, certificate-validity windows or renewal procedures that the amendment changes. Third, brief the examiner network and crew-scheduling function so no medical certificate is issued or renewed against the prior text.
The authoritative text, the amendment rationale and the regulatory review certificate are published on MOLIT's administrative-rules page for Notice 2026-457 (등록일 2026-08-26). Obsidian tracks Korean aviation rulemaking end to end, helping compliance teams map a notice like this to the certificates and crews it touches.
