[The Editors' Verdict] Infectious Disease Prevention and Personal Information

South Korea's quarantine and response to the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19) is currently recognized worldwide as a model example. South Korea's COVID-19 response strategy can be summarized by transparency, openness, and democracy, and the use of personal information is essential in carrying out this strategy. After COVID-19 is completely eradicated, there will be a time to reflect and critically review the overall system for infectious disease prevention in South Korea. Although it has been praised as a global model so far, a perfect strategy or system scoring 100 points is difficult to exist. In future system inspections and improvements, it will be necessary to seek ways to harmonize the public health system, including infectious disease prevention, and privacy protection issues, including personal information, in a balanced manner. In this context, it is worth considering the issues of the policy of disclosing confirmed patients' movement paths (routes) provided by government agencies based on past location information of infected individuals, and the policy of mandatory wristband wearing to prevent and monitor quarantine subjects from leaving their quarantine locations.

First, the policy of disclosing confirmed patients' movement paths is based on the "Infectious Disease Prevention and Control Act." When a crisis alert of caution or higher is issued due to the spread of infectious diseases, the Minister of Health and Welfare must promptly disclose information that the public needs to know to prevent infectious diseases, such as the infected patient's movement routes, means of transportation, medical institutions visited, and contact status. The information disclosed here inevitably includes personal information. This is because personal information refers to any information that can identify an individual's identity, and gender, age, movement routes, means of transportation, and medical institutions can be combined to identify an individual. The issue lies in the scope of personal information disclosed. For example, it raises the question of whether it is necessary to disclose personal information that can specifically identify individuals, such as gender and age, when only the places visited by the confirmed patient along with dates and time slots would suffice. In Germany, discussions on legislation similar to South Korea's confirmed patient movement disclosure policy were halted due to privacy infringement concerns, and instead, a method that automatically sends warning signals to phones near the infected person's phone is being considered, showing a certain level of concern about privacy infringement issues.

Next is the policy of mandatory wristband wearing to prevent and monitor quarantine subjects from leaving their quarantine locations. This policy also involves real-time tracking of the wearer's location and movement routes, enabling 24-hour monitoring of the wearer, thus raising personal information infringement issues. The problem is that there is currently no legal basis for this. Therefore, mandatory wristband wearing is currently impossible. Even if the law is amended to introduce it, questions about its legitimacy will remain. This is because those who do not comply with self-quarantine orders can already be fined up to 3 million won under the "Infectious Disease Prevention and Control Act" (regardless of whether the penalty level is too low), so adding mandatory wristband wearing on top of that could be challenged as excessive infringement on privacy. In fact, since the proposal of the mandatory wristband policy, there have been clear voices warning against the temptation to introduce powerful citizen control devices that could enable the emergence of a Big Brother.

Ultimately, the issues of the confirmed patient movement disclosure policy and the mandatory wristband wearing policy raise questions about the use and scope of personal information for infectious disease prevention, rather than an extreme confrontation or a binary choice between strengthening a totalitarian surveillance system and protecting citizens' freedoms and rights. I believe more in-depth discussion and social consensus are necessary.

Hwang Seong-gi, Professor, Hanyang University School of Law