A bill amending the Personal Information Protection Act (Article 34(3)) would replace the current requirement to notify the Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) of a data breach "without delay" (지체 없이) with a stricter "immediately" (즉시) standard, aligning it with the breach-notification timing already used under the Network Act for telecom incidents. The bill would also require the PIPC to promptly inform relevant authorities (e.g., the competent investigative agency) once it receives or otherwise learns of a breach report. The bill advanced from committee referral to committee review on 26 August 2026; it applies to any personal information controller experiencing a data breach (loss, theft, or leakage), and it is not yet in force.
What this means for you
- If you handle personal data of Korean users, review your breach-response timeline now. The shift from "without delay" to "immediate" signals a stricter interpretation is coming, even before the amendment is finalized — treat any breach as requiring notification with no operational buffer.
- Check your internal escalation process. Confirm that your incident-response team can identify, assess, and report a breach to the PIPC without delays caused by internal review, legal sign-off, or translation steps that might no longer be defensible under an "immediate" standard.
- Watch for the bill's progress. No effective date or penalty has been set yet; the amendment is still in committee review as of 26 August 2026. Confirm final wording and effective date before adjusting compliance procedures, since the exact threshold for "immediate" (e.g., specific hour/day limits) has not been specified in the draft.
- No source link was provided with this alert. We could not verify or link to the original bill text; treat this summary as preliminary pending confirmation from an official National Assembly or PIPC source.
Munteok provides regulatory information, not legal advice.