Korea's Privacy Chief Pushes Prevention Over Punishment

*This column was contributed by Song Kyung-hee, Chairperson of the Personal Information Protection Commission.*

Since taking office as chair of the Personal Information Protection Commission last October, and in my December presidential briefing, I have consistently emphasized one point: the shift to a preventive management system. We must move toward a framework that identifies potential breaches in advance and manages risks proactively.

The proliferation of artificial intelligence, big data, and the Internet of Things has exponentially increased touchpoints where personal information flows. The scale and speed of data processing have reached levels that no reactive response system can adequately address. Once personal information is leaked, the damage is extensive and long-lasting. The costs of fines, lawsuits, and lost trust following a breach far exceed the investment required for prevention. Without public trust, sustainable growth in the digital economy is impossible.

With this awareness, the Commission established the Prevention and Coordination Review Office. This marks our first step. The office is tasked with proactively identifying high-risk processing areas, developing institutional and technical countermeasures through coordination with relevant ministries, agencies, and private sector, and uncovering structural improvements to prevent recurrence of similar incidents. For a prevention-centered system to take root across society, this role must expand further, and its capabilities must grow accordingly.

A preventive management system is not an accident-prevention campaign. It is a governance framework that structurally manages risks throughout the entire lifecycle of personal information processing. The regulatory focus shifts from the binary judgment of "was the law violated?" to a continuous assessment of "what risks existed and what was done to mitigate them?"

The core principle underlying this approach is risk-based regulation. Imposing identical obligations on a small tutoring academy and a large hospital handling hundreds of millions of medical records leaves high-risk areas neglected while over-regulating low-risk ones. Protection intensity must be designed proportional to the magnitude of risk for prevention to be effective. Furthermore, for this system to function substantively, accountability must extend to top decision-makers within organizations. Prevention is not solely a task for working-level staff—it can only be sustained when executives allocate budgets and personnel and bear responsibility for outcomes.

This direction is not unique to Korea. The European Union has codified "Privacy by Design"—embedding data protection from the design stage—as a legal obligation and mandated prior impact assessments for high-risk processing. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has required companies through consent orders to implement multi-year privacy programs and independent audits. Of course, emphasizing prevention does not weaken post-incident sanctions. These two pillars are not opposed but complementary. This is about adjusting the policy center of gravity and prioritizing resource allocation.

Organizations with robust prevention measures demonstrate high resilience even when breaches occur. Organizations equipped with data classification and access controls can quickly identify breach scope and respond accordingly. Organizations that embed encryption and data minimization principles from the design stage structurally limit potential damage. Prevention not only reduces breaches but also determines recovery capacity afterward.

It is time to move beyond the old dichotomy of regulation versus innovation. Systematic understanding of risks and accumulation of preventive capabilities are prerequisites that enable responsible data and AI utilization. The Commission's shift to a preventive system is not merely a change in administrative procedures—it is a process of elevating Korea's digital trust infrastructure to the next level. The trust and safety that citizens actually experience—that is the crucial measure of success for this transformation.