While researching this problem, I came across this question. The solution I found is resolved in this blog post. Confirm wheleph for solution.
There is essentially no way to mark an existing image, you can simply load the manifest of the existing tag and reload the manifest as a new tag:
curl /v2/mybusybox/manifests/latest -H 'accept: application/vnd.docker.distribution.manifest.v2+json' > manifest.json
Then download this manifest file.
curl -XPUT '/v2/mybusybox/manifests/new_tag' -H 'content-type: application/vnd.docker.distribution.manifest.v2+json' -d '@manifest.json'
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