As South Koreans are generating more digital footprints thanks to the country’s powerful digital infrastructure, managing one’s online legacy following death is becoming a thorny issue for family members and online service providers.

Digital legacy refers to personal data including texts, pictures and video clips that a user leaves behind in cyberspace.

“We remove a deceased user’s ID on request of a bereaved family but the surviving members cannot access other personal data including passwords,” said an official at Naver, the country’s largest portal site.

Meanwhile, Daum, the second-largest Web portal in Korea, opens up a user’s personal content to family members if they send a death verification form.

For all the mounting cases of posthumous disputes over digital assets, the country has yet to set up a proper legal system that can protect personal data. Jumping into the issue is ruling Saenuri Party Rep. Shon In-chun, who proposed a bill purporting to give online users the option to decide how to process their personal data after they die.

Under the bill, online service providers would be required to ask users to decide on their digital assets when they sign up for the service.

Digital assets such as downloaded music files and purchased e-books or game items contain not only emotional but also monetary value. According to a study by computer security firm McAfee in 2011, people around the world valued their individual digital assets at $37,438.

In May, another ruling party member, Rep. Kim Jang-sil, proposed a bill that would pass digital legacies to legal heirs of the deceased.

“The value of digital assets by the deceased has been better understood, but the current law doesn’t cover rules on the management and succession process for online assets,” Kim said.

Currently, Germany and six states in the U.S. guarantee an inheritance of online legacy by law.

By Park Han-na (hnpark@heraldcorp.com)