Korea Needs to Fix Mobility Market Before Robotaxis Arrive

As Korea moves toward its goal of commercializing Level 4 autonomous driving in defined settings by 2027, the central constraint may not be technological readiness but whether the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and the National Assembly reform the market in advance. As Robert Atkinson and Sejin Kim argue in The Korea Times, without structural reform to the country’s mobility market, Korea risks deploying advanced autonomous vehicles within a closed, taxi-centered regulatory system.

Korea’s current framework, anchored in the Passenger Transport Service Act, relies on discretionary approvals, minimum fleet size requirements, and case-by-case entry decisions. Rather than fostering open competition, this structure tightly controls market entry and prioritizes the protection of incumbent taxi interests. Atkinson and Kim explain this limits flexibility and scale, even as the government expands testing zones and regulatory pilots.

This rigidity reflects the political economy of Korea’s taxi market, where licenses function as tradable financial assets and reforms are often interpreted as affecting household wealth. This dynamic has also shaped Korea’s response to past mobility innovations, with services like Uber and Tada constrained or eliminated through legal and legislative action rather than integrated into a broader competitive framework.

The implications for autonomous mobility are significant, particularly for robotaxis. Early fleets will require high utilization rates to justify capital investment, yet Korea’s tightly controlled supply model limits the ability to respond to fluctuations in demand. This approach restricts the flexible ride-hailing and ride-sharing systems that help absorb such variations in other markets.

To address these challenges, the authors call for three key reforms:

• Expand legal room for platform-based mobility services and replace discretionary entry controls with rules based on safety, insurance, and operational standards.
• Scale existing contribution mechanisms into a transparent transition fund tied to voluntary license retirement and industry restructuring.
• Clarify that autonomous mobility services will be licensed based on operational performance and safety certification, consistent with Korea’s commercialization roadmap.

Atkinson and Kim conclude that without reform, Korea risks importing cutting-edge autonomous technology into a legacy taxi structure, limiting innovation and market efficiency.

Read the full commentary in The Korea Times.