Self-Quarantine System and Personal Information Privacy in South Korea

The purpose of this study is to present a legal system in which information is actively collected and utilized to monitor the loca-tion and health of self-quarantined persons through IT, to identify loopholes in the law and regulatory system in view of data pro-tection and utilization, and to propose a legislative solution for those loopholes. In Korea, the Infectious Disease Control and Pre-vention Act (“the Prevention Act”) regulates all matters related to the prevention and management of infectious diseases,including the use of information on self-quarantine apps. Article 42(2) of the Prevention Act states that local governments are au-thorized to collect the location and health information of a quarantined citizen; however, the law does not elaborate on how thisinformation can be used and what other information can be used in combination with the collected information. Thus, the Per-sonal Information Protection Act (“the Protection Act”), as a general privacy law, is applied supplementarily. However, since theProtection Act is very general and does not have accumulated cases, there is uncertainty about how governments can utilize thecollected information. Therefore, it is necessary to consider a legislative solution that includes a direct and clear basis for the useof personal information collected under the Prevention Act in consideration of Korean privacy regulations.