개인정보처리의 연구특권에 관한 헌법적 연구

This paper aims to clarify the validity of the relationship between research privilege and personal information protection in the process pseudonymized information under the Personal Information Protection Act from the perspective of the balance of legal interests. In the current Personal Information Protection Act, the data processor can process pseudonymized information without the consent of the data subject for scientific research. It also excludes the application of the rights of the data subject to achieve the purpose of scientific research. Pseudonymization is a technical safeguard to reduce the protection density of information and expand the use of information, which promotes the balance of legal interests between the right to self-determination of personal information and academic freedom. In this regard, we compared the GDPR in terms of expanding the scope of scientific research and balancing the legal interests of academic freedom and privacy in the pseudonymization of sensitive information. First of all, the research privilege presupposes public interest as a basic right of freedom of research, so it is possible to pseudonymize without consent in terms of contributing to social development through research. However, since the scope of scientific research has been expanded to research institutions in the private sector, and scientific research reflects the methodological, systematic, and verifiable characteristics in research, it is not reasonable to evaluate that scientific research directly includes public interest. In addition, although the current Personal Information Protection Act allows pseudonymization of all personal information, it is necessary to proportionally require public interest when pseudonymizing sensitive information. This could be an important requirement for data processors to recognize the right of access as a right in order to expand the use of pseudonymized data.