Ruling Party and Government: "Liability for Personal Data Leaks Must Be Strengthened... New Investigative Measures Needed"

Government: "Significantly Expanding Support for SMEs' Pre-emptive Investments in Hacking Prevention"

The government and the ruling party have agreed to swiftly push for an amendment to the Personal Information Protection Act in order to strengthen responses to corporate personal data breach incidents.

Song Kyunghee, chair of the Personal Information Protection Commission, is speaking at the Party-Government consultative meeting to strengthen response to personal information leaks held at the National Assembly Members' Office Building on the 4th. Photo by Kim Hyunmin

On the morning of the 4th, the ruling party and the government held a meeting titled "Party-Government Consultative Meeting to Strengthen Responses to Personal Information Leaks" at the National Assembly Members' Office Building. They stated that they "discussed amendment measures to the law that need to be promoted swiftly in response to the recent large-scale personal information leak incidents."

Assemblyman Park Sanghyuk of the Democratic Party of Korea, a member of the National Assembly’s Political Affairs Committee, met with reporters for a briefing right after the closed-door consultative meeting and said, "We discussed improvement measures to delete the intent and negligence requirements for statutory damages so that companies and others bear the overall burden of proof regarding personal information leaks, thereby ensuring that effective compensation for damages is realized."

Under the current law, in order to provide effective relief for damage caused by leak incidents, there is a statutory damages system that allows the court to determine the amount of compensation within the legal limit after taking into account various circumstances, even if the data subject does not prove the specific amount of damage.

Park also said, "There are concerns that personal information leaked in large quantities through hacking and other means is being distributed via the dark web and elsewhere, leading to criminal damage," adding, "We decided to prohibit the act of purchasing, providing, or distributing leaked personal information with knowledge that it is leaked data, and to eradicate illegal distribution by establishing new criminal penalty provisions."

Park stated, "Among the companies under investigation, we will impose penalty surcharges for failure to comply with corrective orders, introduce evidence preservation orders such as for access logs when an infringement incident occurs, and conduct regular fact-finding investigations on large-scale processors." It is reported that, to swiftly block the spread of damage in the event of a large-scale leak, the government has proposed the introduction of an emergency protection order and has requested prompt legislation.

Meanwhile, the government is also preparing measures to significantly expand support when small and medium-sized enterprises make pre-emptive investments to prevent hacking incidents. Yang Cheongsam, Secretary General of the Personal Information Protection Commission, said, "We will significantly expand government budget support programs so that small and medium-sized enterprises can strengthen their security systems for the safe management of personal information, and we will work to ensure that this is reflected in next year’s budget." Reported by Moon Hyewon and Jeon Youngjoo.

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