South Korea’s strengthened privacy-penalty rules take effect
( May 18, 2026, 07:29 GMT | Official Statement) -- MLex Summary: South Korea’s revised penalty rules for privacy-law violations will take effect Tuesday, strengthening how the country’s privacy regulator calculates and applies administrative fines. According to the Personal Information Protection Commission, the revised privacy law decree and standards will require surcharges to be calculated based on the higher of a company’s previous business-year revenue or its three-year average revenue, a change aimed at better reflecting the economic scale of fast-growing IT and platform companies. They will also allow the regulator to deny some or all fine reductions for “very serious” violations, even where mitigating factors such as investigation cooperation or voluntary protection efforts exist. The regulator said the changes respond to repeated large-scale data breaches and are intended to make penalties more effective and proportionate to both a company’s current economic capacity and the severity of the violation.Statement is attached (in Korean)....
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