Korea Tenders MCP Server

@pipeworx/korea-tenders

Open South Korean government procurement: bid notices currently open on KONEPS (나라장터, the Public Procurement Service portal), Defense e-Procurement, LH, K-water and Nuri-jangteo, plus the suppliers that hold KONEPS contracts, all from Korean public-data-portal (data.go.kr) feeds as assembled by BOIM (boim.io). Notices and vendors are keyless; award results are BYOK. Live per request.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1865+ live data sources. This is an independent, unofficial integration — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the upstream provider.

Tools

• korea_search_tenders(query?, category?, type?, region?, limit?) — open bid notices by free text (title / buying agency), category word, type (goods / services / construction / other) and buyer region. Each notice carries title, type, source portal, category and group, buyer, closing deadline (KST), estimated price in KRW, contract and award method, and the g2b.go.kr notice URL. Closest deadline first; only notices still open.

• korea_search_vendors(query?, category?, group?, region?, cert?, limit?) — suppliers with KONEPS shopping-mall contract items or deliveries in the last 12 months, by item category, group, region, name and certification (여성기업, 사회적기업, 장애인기업, …). Returns the vendor id for the next tool.

• korea_get_vendor(id) — one vendor in full: per-item 12-month records and amounts, contract items, top agencies, contract methods, PPS price ranges, certifications, supply regions, business-registration status, data limits.

• korea_list_categories(group?) — the Public Procurement Service item taxonomy (물품분류): all groups with their top categories, or every category in one group with its 8-digit code and vendor count.

• korea_get_awards(type?, from, to | notice_no, winner?, title?, limit?, page?, _apiKey) — BYOK. Multi-year award results (who won which bid): notice, buyer, winner name and business number, award amount in KRW, award rate, bidder count. Requires an API key: pass your own free data.go.kr service key as _apiKey.

Auth

The four BOIM-backed tools are keyless. korea_get_awards is BYOK and requires an API key (Bruce's ruling, fleet #3423): there is no platform key. Register free at https://www.data.go.kr, apply for the Public Procurement Service successful-bid information service, and pass the key as _apiKey. Without one the tool refuses with "requires an API key" and says where to get it.

Data sources

• https://boim.io/api/mcp — BOIM's public MCP endpoint (JSON-RPC tools/call); this pack calls find_public_bids, search_vendors, get_vendor and list_categories and reshapes the results.
• BOIM assembles, twice daily, five bid feeds from the Korean public-data portal (data.go.kr): PPS KONEPS bid notices (15129394), Defense e-Procurement (15158416), LH (15159012), K-water (15101635), PPS Nuri-jangteo (15129456); vendor cards come from the KONEPS shopping-mall item service (15129471) and contract-information service (15129427). The portal lists all of them with no reuse restriction (이용허락범위 제한 없음).
• BOIM's terms (https://boim.io/terms/, effective 2026-10-06) welcome per-request MCP/API use within the free range and forbid bulk collection or redistribution — this pack only proxies per call and stores nothing.

Things the next person would otherwise rediscover

• BOIM matches ONE Korean phrase. query: "소프트웨어 유지보수" returns 0; "소프트웨어" returns rows. English is not matched at all. The pack maps common English terms (software, IT services, cloud, construction, drone, CCTV, Seoul, Gyeonggi, …) to a single Korean term and reports what it sent in query_sent; anything outside the alias table passes through unchanged, so an untranslated English word yields an honest zero with a note.
• type must be Korean upstream (물품 / 용역 / 공사 / 기타); the pack accepts English and rejects anything else loudly rather than silently returning all.
• list_categories with a group still answers under a groups key (one group, with its categories nested); there is no top-level categories.
• Vendor ordering is relevance → card completeness → daily rotation (rotation_seed), explicitly not by procurement volume; the same search returns a different page tomorrow. Vendor ids are stable.
• Dates: bid deadline is ISO with a +09:00 offset; vendor dates arrive as YYYYMMDD and are reshaped to YYYY-MM-DD in the search tool (the full vendor card is passed through as received).
• The official KONEPS open API on data.go.kr needs a registered service key (SERVICE_KEY_IS_NULL without one). None is held, so BOIM is the route; if a key is ever funded the same tool shape can be re-pointed at apis.data.go.kr/1230000/ad/BidPublicInfoService.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "korea-tenders": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/korea-tenders/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/korea-tenders/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth, connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1865+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

No MCP client? Call it over HTTP

curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/korea_search_tenders \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"query":"software","limit":5}'

No account needed for the first calls. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/korea_search_tenders. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.

Run it from npm

@pipeworx/mcp-korea-tenders is a local stdio bridge to the Pipeworx gateway: your MCP client starts it with npx, and it forwards every call to the same https://gateway.pipeworx.io/korea-tenders/mcp endpoint shown above. It needs network access; there is no offline mode.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "korea-tenders": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-korea-tenders"]
    }
  }
}

Without a key it calls anonymously, capped at 50 calls a day. A free account raises that to 200 a day: get a key at https://pipeworx.io/signup and add "env": { "PIPEWORX_API_KEY": "<your key>" } to the server entry. The key is sent as a Bearer token, the same way a hosted connection sends it, so calls are metered and billed exactly as they are there.

It lists only this pack's tools by default. Set PIPEWORX_META_TOOLS=1 to also list ask_pipeworx and the other gateway-wide tools.

Behind an HTTPS proxy: Node's built-in fetch does not read HTTPS_PROXY by default. Newer Node releases honour it when NODE_USE_ENV_PROXY=1 is set; check your Node version's documentation.

Using with ask_pipeworx

Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Korea Tenders data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides
• pipeworx.io

License

MIT