Meet South Korea's PIPA data protection rules with less effort

PIPA is the Personal Information Protection Act (Act No. 10465), South Korea's comprehensive data protection law. It came into force on 30 September 2011 and governs how public and private organisations collect, use, provide, store and destroy personal information. It sets consent rules, security safeguards, breach notification duties and data subject rights, and is enforced by the Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC), which became the single privacy regulator in 2020.

Any personal information controller that processes personal information of individuals in Korea must comply, whether a public body, company, non-profit or individual operating a business. Foreign companies are also caught when they handle Koreans' personal information, and controllers with no address in Korea that meet thresholds set by Presidential Decree must designate a domestic agent under Article 31-2 to handle privacy officer duties, breach reporting and regulator requests.

The PIPC can impose penalty surcharges of up to 3% of total sales under Article 64-2, following the 2023 amendment that took effect on 15 September 2023, with revenue unrelated to the violation excluded. Where no sales exist, a surcharge of up to two billion won may apply. PIPA also provides administrative fines, corrective orders, criminal penalties for serious violations and civil damages, including statutory damages claims under Article 39-2.

No. Consent is one of several legal grounds in Article 15. Since the 2023 amendment, controllers may also collect and use personal information without consent where it is necessary to conclude or perform a contract with the data subject, to comply with a legal obligation, or for other listed grounds. Consent is still required in specific cases such as sensitive information, unique identifiers and children under 14, where a legal representative must consent.

Article 34 requires controllers to notify affected data subjects and report to the PIPC or a designated specialist institution without delay once they become aware of loss, theft or divulgence of personal information. The Enforcement Decree sets the detail, including a 72 hour window and the categories of breach that must be reported, such as those affecting 1,000 or more data subjects, sensitive information or unauthorised external access.

PIPA and GDPR share core principles: purpose limitation, data minimisation, security safeguards, breach notification and rights to access, correction, erasure and portability. PIPA is generally stricter on consent formalities and on unique identifiers such as resident registration numbers. The European Commission adopted an adequacy decision for South Korea in December 2021, so personal data can flow from the EU to Korean organisations covered by PIPA without extra safeguards.

ISO 27001 does not certify PIPA compliance, but its information security controls support the safeguards required by Article 29, such as access control, encryption, logging and incident response. Korea also runs its own ISMS-P certification, linked to Article 32-2. Organisations with ISO 27001 still need PIPA-specific measures, including a privacy policy, a privacy officer, consent records, retention and destruction rules and processes for data subject requests.

Yes. OneClickComply supports PIPA today. Customers can reuse existing GDPR and ISO 27001 controls against PIPA articles, collect security evidence automatically, generate privacy and security policies and get expert guidance from our in-house audit team. OneClickComply does not issue ISMS-P certification or guarantee compliance.