On 9 January 2020, amendments to Korea’s three major data privacy laws (Three Data Laws), i.e., Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA), Act on the Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection (Network Act), and Credit Information Use and Protection Act (Credit Information Act), were passed at a plenary session of the National Assembly of Korea. These three amendments bills were promulgated on 4 February and will enter into force on 5 August 2020.

We live in an era of the data-driven economy where the use of new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), cloud services, and Internet of Things (IOT) has become a necessity in order to process increasingly larger amounts of data and develop new businesses in the IT sector. In line with the legislative trends in other major parts of the world, there has long been a push in Korea towards amending the Three Data Laws to ensure the secure use of personal information while still paving the way for the more efficient processing of big data. The revisions to the Three Data Laws are the culmination of such efforts.