A Study on Personal Information Protection amid the COVID-19 Pandemic

COVID-19, a highly infectious disease, has affected the globe tremendously since its outbreak during late 2019 in Wuhan, China. In order to respond to the pandemic, governments around the world introduced a variety of public health measures including contact-tracing, a method to identify individuals who may have come into contact with a confirmed COVID-19 patient, which usually leads to quarantine of certain individuals. Like many other governments, the South Korean health authorities adopted public health measures using latest data technologies. Key data technology-based quarantine measures include:(1) Electronic Entry Log; (2) Self-check App; and (3) COVID-19 Wristband, and heavily relied on individual’s personal information for contact-tracing and self-isolation. In fact, during the early stages of the pandemic, South Korea’s strategy proved to be highly effective in containing the spread of coronavirus while other countries suffered significantly from the surge of COVID-19 patients. However, while the South Korean COVID-19 policy was hailed as a success, it must be noted that the government achieved this by collecting and processing a wide range of personal information. In collecting and processing personal information, the data minimum principle – one of the widely recognized common data principles between different data protection laws – should be applied. Public health measures have no exceptions, and it is even more crucial when government activities are involved. In this study, we provide an analysis of how the governments around the world reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic and evaluate whether the South Korean government’s digital quarantine measures ensured the protection of its citizen’s right to privacy.