Ministry of the Interior and Safety Establishes Specific Standards for Using Personal Data in Disasters... Protecting Victims' Information

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Cheol-young] The Ministry of the Interior and Safety announced on the 22nd that it will establish a public notice on the "Request, Provision, and Implementation of Personal and Location Information for Disaster Victims, etc." to further protect the personal information of disaster victims and others more safely.

Until now, in the event of a disaster, identifying the location and number of people requiring rescue on-site has been considered the most important factor for rapid rescue. Accordingly, in 2019, Article 74-3 of the "Framework Act on the Management of Disasters and Safety" was newly established to allow the acquisition and provision of personal and location information. However, detailed regulations for personal information protection were not prepared, raising concerns about the protection of personal information.

This public notice stipulates specific matters regarding the request, provision, and use of personal and location information for disaster victims, etc., presenting methods to utilize personal and location information for rapid disaster response and plans to strictly manage personal information.

First, it defines the scope of requesting, providing, and using personal and location information as cases processed to protect the life and body of the people from disasters, specifying that the timing of information provision requests is after the operation of the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters and Regional Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters.

In addition, it sets the principle that when anonymization is possible, information should be anonymized, and when the purpose cannot be achieved through anonymization, pseudonymization should be applied. It also specifies detailed matters for protecting personal and location information, such as promptly destroying personal and location information upon completion of disaster response tasks. Furthermore, it presents methods for requesting personal and location information and stipulates that information systems should be prioritized for efficient and safe information provision.

This public notice is scheduled to be established by the end of July. Choi Man-rim, Director of Disaster Response Policy, said, "Through the preparation of this public notice, we expect the effectiveness of disaster safety management to improve and, at the same time, for it to serve as an opportunity to deepen the public's trust in the use and protection of personal information by administrative agencies."

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