Mosaic Applied... Human Rights Commission 'Improvement Recommendation' for Public Official Providing Self-Quarantine Violation Video

Raising Awareness of COVID-19 Self-Quarantine
Identity Not Specified in Media Reports
'Providing Without Consent' Itself a Problem
"Violation of Personal Information Protection Act Even for Public Interest"

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Gwan-joo] The National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) has recommended improvements regarding a public official who provided videos of COVID-19 quarantine rule violators to media outlets for public interest purposes, citing that the official did not obtain consent from the individuals involved, sparking anticipated controversy.

On the 22nd, the NHRCK announced that it accepted the complaint filed by complainant A and recommended to the district office head, to whom public official B?who provided the videos to the media?belongs, to conduct job training on personal information protection for B and to establish internal procedures.

According to the NHRCK, A was classified as a self-quarantined person in July last year after overlapping movements with a confirmed COVID-19 patient but violated self-quarantine by moving to their business premises and was reported by the relevant district office. Later, in November of the same year, A was found guilty of violating the Infectious Disease Control and Prevention Act and was fined 3 million KRW in the first trial; the appeal trial is currently ongoing.

During this process, A filed a complaint with the NHRCK, claiming that the district office provided videos filmed at A’s home and business without consent to media outlets, and that these videos were broadcasted.

B, the public official in charge of public relations at the district office who provided the videos to the media, claimed, "I judged that there was a need to strengthen awareness of compliance with quarantine guidelines and provided the videos to the broadcasting company on the condition that mosaic processing would be applied." Although the videos were not mosaicked when delivered to the media, the broadcasting company accepted B’s request and mosaicked A’s face and business name in the actual broadcasted footage.

Regarding this, the NHRCK pointed out that the videos provided to the media were collected as evidence in preparation for legal actions against violations of the Infectious Disease Control and Prevention Act and thus constitute personal information that should not be used for purposes other than collection. It also noted that the internal procedures were not followed and A’s consent was not obtained during the video provision process. Furthermore, the failure to ensure safety measures such as mosaic processing of personal information was also seen as problematic.

However, since the actual broadcasted videos were fully mosaicked, making it difficult to identify the individuals in the footage, it is hard to consider that personal information was infringed. Given the repeated violations of self-quarantine guidelines at the time and the strong public interest purpose to prevent such violations, controversy is expected over this NHRCK decision.

The NHRCK explained, "We recommended to the head of B’s affiliated institution to provide job training for the respondent and to establish internal procedures to ensure that even when videos are provided for public interest purposes, they do not violate the Personal Information Protection Act."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.