The Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) announced on the 26th that it will work with relevant ministries to improve 61 laws identified as having factors for personal information infringement out of 1,343 laws across 15 areas including national taxes and industries.
The PIPC found cases in national tax and industrial laws where personal information could be compromised, such as: ▷ cases where resident registration numbers under the Personal Information Protection Act should be processed based on presidential or higher-level decrees, but lack legal basis ▷ situations where the legal basis or scope for handling unique personal identifiers or sensitive information is unclear ▷ cases where unnecessary excessive personal information is collected and processed beyond the purpose of the task.
Over the last three years, the PIPC has conducted a thorough inspection and improvement campaign addressing personal information infringement factors across 5,192 existing laws in 44 areas.
In 2022, PIPC inspected 2,178 laws in 15 areas closely related to daily life and overhauled 90 laws. In 2023, they inspected 1,671 laws in 14 areas, such as administration and judiciary, and reorganized 176 laws. This year, 1,343 laws in 15 areas, including national tax and industry, were inspected, and improvements were recommended to relevant ministries for 61 laws identified with infringement factors.
Looking at the nature of the 327 laws recommended for improvements over three years, 189 cases (58%) involved the habitual excessive collection of personal information beyond its intended purpose.
In response, PIPC recommended the removal of personal information irrelevant to the application purpose, such as educational background, home address, and registered domicile, from application forms used for civil complaints and other applications.
Furthermore, improvements based on recommendations to prohibit the collection and use of resident registration numbers in cases lacking a clear legal basis accounted for 18% (58 cases). Recommendations to clarify the treatment basis or scope for sensitive and uniquely identifiable information represented 21% (69 cases), while other procedural protection measure improvements accounted for 3% (11 cases).
The PIPC plans to collaborate with the Ministry of Government Legislation to support the review of improvement plans prepared by each ministry.
Choi Jang-hyuk, the Vice Chair of PIPC, stated, “We have worked over the past three years to improve personal information infringement factors in existing laws so that the public sector can lead in strengthening personal information protection,” and added, “We will continue to strive to establish a trustworthy personal information protection system for the public by ensuring that the basic principles of personal information protection are upheld during the enactment and revision of laws through the pre-evaluation of infringement factors.”