(123rf)
(123rf)

A total of 3.91 million peices of personal information were illegally taken from state-affiliated bodies last year, including the administrative, legislative and the judiciary branches, Personal Information Protection Commission data showed Wednesday.

The number refers to individual entries of data, so if a body leaks someone's name, phone number and address, this is recorded as three items.

According to the PIPC data, revealed by Rep. Lee Jeong-moon of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, the annual figure has risen from 74,000 in 2020, 213,000 in 2021, 648,000 in 2022, and 3.52 million in 2023. This year's figure, as of July, was 912,000.

The data covers all bodies defined as public institutes under the Personal Information Protection Act: administrative bodies of the National Assembly, the courts, the Constitutional Court, and the National Election Commission; the central administrative agencies (including agencies under the Presidential Office and the Prime Minister’s Office) and their affiliated entities; and local governments.

The largest personal information hacking from a public body in the past five years was the one involving the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education, which was sanctioned in July 2023 for the theft of 2.97 million pieces of information. Korea National Council on Social Welfare also saw a substantial data theft, affecting 1.35 million pieces of personal information.

Lee pointed out that very little resources are allocated to protect the 75.7 billion pieces of personal information held by the various government bodies. His report showed that 83 state agencies — 10.4 percent — spend less than 10 million won ($7,200) a year on protecting personal information.


minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com