13 Million Personal Data Breaches This Year... 4 Times Increase Compared to 2017

Assemblyman Min Hyung-bae: "We Must Strive to Improve Laws and Systems"

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Yoon Jamin] This year, more than 13 million personal information records have been leaked, exceeding four times the number of leaks that occurred in 2017 alone.

According to the recent four-year (2017~2020) personal information leak data submitted by the Personal Information Protection Commission to National Assembly member Min Hyung-bae (Democratic Party of Korea, Gwangju Gwangsan-gu Eul), as of the end of July, 13,243,958 personal information records have been leaked.

This is about 4.17 times an increase compared to 3,173,389 cases in 2017. In 2018 and 2019, 6,193,294 and 9,771,021 cases occurred respectively, showing an increasing trend every year.

Nine out of ten leaked cases were due to hacking.

Among the 32.38 million personal information records leaked over the past four years, 29.31 million cases, or 90.52%, were caused by hacking.

Cases where the cause was not identified accounted for 7.58%, while work negligence and employee negligence accounted for 1.07% and 0.70%, respectively, and intentional leaks reached 0.13%.

Since 2017, 23.83 million cases of leaks occurred online, and 8.38 million cases were from the private sector. Leaks in the public sector also reached 157,000 cases.

More than half, 53.3%, of administrative sanctions due to personal information leaks were corrective orders, while imposed fines amounted to 2.584 billion KRW, and penalties were 5.912 billion KRW.

Assembly member Min Hyung-bae said, “Recently, incidents such as leaks of personal information collected during COVID-19 quarantine processes have not stopped, which is problematic,” and added, “The newly launched Personal Information Protection Commission should actively work to protect and safely utilize personal information and strive to improve laws and systems.”