Personal Information Protection Commission to Increase Next Year's Budget by 35% for Accelerating Digital Transformation

2022 Budget Proposal Totaling 49.7 Billion KRW

[Asia Economy Reporter Koo Eun-mo] As digital transformation in daily life accelerates due to COVID-19, raising concerns about personal information protection, the budget for next year of the Personal Information Protection Commission, the control tower, has increased by more than 30% compared to this year. The budget for next year is focused on policy support to improve the level of personal information protection, infringement prevention projects, and safe data utilization support projects to promote the data era.

The Personal Information Protection Commission announced on the 2nd that the 2022 budget was set at 49.7 billion KRW. This is an increase of 12.9 billion KRW (34.8%) compared to this year (36.8 billion KRW). In particular, the project expenses within the budget amount to 34.2 billion KRW, which is a 49.7% (11.4 billion KRW) increase from this year (22.8 billion KRW).

First, as the control tower for personal information protection policies, the Commission will advance the personal information protection system across society and promote the ‘Personal Information Safety Keeper’ project for proactive protection enhancement. To this end, it will establish a protection system that the public can trust through legal and institutional improvements and policy research (1.14 billion KRW) in response to changes in the personal information protection environment such as the Digital New Deal, and by enhancing understanding of personal information protection policies (740 million KRW). Additionally, it will proactively respond to personal information infringements that may occur during the use of personal information (3.99 billion KRW) and increase the budget for infringement prevention and actual condition inspections (3.98 billion KRW).

Support for safe data utilization projects will also be expanded. First, to promote safe data utilization, the budget for supplementing and improving the pseudonymized information system (410 million KRW) and for building and operating a comprehensive platform for pseudonymized information utilization that supports pseudonymized information processing (3.09 billion KRW) will be increased. The budget for expanding one-stop customized services such as consulting, technology, and manpower support for companies and institutions processing pseudonymized information (1.11 billion KRW) has also been increased.

The Commission has newly allocated a total budget of 5.5 billion KRW to strengthen personal information protection technology in the data era and guarantee the right to data portability. It newly allocated 3 billion KRW for research and development of personal information protection enhancement technologies to prevent personal information infringements and protect rights due to the surge in data utilization, and 2.5 billion KRW for standardizing data formats and transmission methods between different industries to promote personal information utilization based on MyData for all citizens and all sectors nationwide.

In addition, it supports inclusive society and job projects to expand the base for personal information protection and utilization. It operates training courses for pseudonymization and anonymization experts and personal information professional managers with comprehensive capabilities in laws, systems, and technologies in the field of personal information protection, and discovers and supports commercialization of innovative personal information protection technologies held by small and medium-sized enterprises and startups to respond to personal information infringement threats.

Park Yeon-byeong, Planning and Coordination Officer of the Personal Information Protection Commission, said, “The Commission will actively support safe data utilization based on the public’s trust in personal information protection,” and added, “We will do our best to establish a new world-class personal information protection system suitable for the data economy era.”

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