Korean Ministry to announce privacy guidelines for ISPs by June

Seoul, Feb 21 (Asia Pulse) -- The Information and Communications Ministry said Monday that it will announce privacy guidelines for e-commerce, Internet service providers (ISPs) and telecommunications firms into effect by June.

The Korea Information Security Agency disclosed the guidelines on its Web site (www.kisa.or.kr) to tap opinions from Internet users through early March. Web operators will be asked to follow the guidelines during the first half and obliged to strictly abide by the rules from next year or face prosecution.

Under the regulations, ISPs cannot collect personal background and personality information on community members without permission and cannot hand over collected information to a third party. Print-outs of data of community members must be eliminated or burnt and ISPs must declare strict privacy regulations through their articles.

Any misuse or leakage of data on clients will face up to one year in prison and fines of up to 10 million won. When a client demands a correction on his or her data, the ISP must immediately make correction or face fines of up to 5 million won.