Recently, circumstances for dance creation are changed, so choreographers choreograph in various methods. For example, employee choreographer, guest choreographer, joint choreographer, assistant choreographer, repertory choreographer, musical choreographer, collaboration choreographer. The purpose of this study is to examine, based on Korean Copyright Law and precedents of Korean court, who owns the copyright in these various choreographic participation methods and the effect of copyright ownership. As a result, this study concludes as follow: First, in case of employee choreographer, when choreography was done as part of his job under employer's planning, a work was played in the name of employer and as long as they have no other set in a contract or employees' rules, employer has a copyright. If not, employee has a copyright. Second, in case of guest choreographer, he or she has a copyright. If client and choreographer have agreed to transfer copyright to client by the contract, only author's property rights are transferred to client and author's moral rights are left to choreographer. Third, in case of joint choreographer, when several choreographers created a work jointly, and each contribution part is indivisibly united, so it is not available separately, everyone have copyright. But when each contribution part is available separately, each choreographer has copyright to it. Fourth, in case of assistant choreographer, only when he or she created really to some degree, he or she has copyright with choreographer. Fifth, in case of repertory choreographer, when he or she changes original work enough to be accepted as new work by social norm and his or her work is actually similar original work, he or she has secondary copyright only to the new elements of the derivative work. Sixth, in case of musical, when choreographer creates dance part, he or she has copyright alone to it. Seventh, in case of collaboration, artists of different genres can't generally have copyright to choreography, however, when a fusional work was created jointly, everyone has joint copyright.

This study summarizes issues related to copyright issues around dance or choreography in Korea. As a result of analyzing 42 previous studies, which was searched at RISS(Research Information Sharing Services), three major issues were aroused. First, the concept of dance copyright should be defined more clearly, and the requirements for recognition of creativity in dance works should be clarified. Second, in order to activate dance copyright protection, it is necessary to fix the ephemeral phenomena of dance in tangible media. Third, dance copyright is classified as a dramatic works in Korean Copyright Act, but the term is not appropriate. The main contents of this discussion reviews copyright law and precedents of each country, including Korea. Based on these discussions, a suggested improvement plan for the protection of dance copyright is proposed.