Bo-eun leads the digital content team. She has covered foreign affairs, North Korea, tech, economy and gender issues at The Korea Times. She did a short stint at the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, where she obtained a new perspective on news production and life. Small sources of joy for her are lounging in the sun, having a good latte and swimming.
Gov't to inspect Netflix over customer data violation
By Kim Bo-eun
By Kim Bo-eun
Netflix Korea is facing a government inspection over violations of the local customer data protection law.
The law requires local firms to designate and disclose a person or division in charge of customer data protection, and a corresponding telephone number.
However, Netflix Korea's website only discloses an email address of its division handling customer data.
Rep. Yang Jung-suk of the National Assembly's committee on ICT and broadcasting on Friday said Netflix may be fined if it is found in violation of the law.
Regulations state that violators of the law can be subject to up to 10 million won in fines.
The government's committee on protecting customer data has stated that Netflix's failure to heed related regulations may subject it to inspection. Whether the company would become subject to a fine would be based on the findings from the inspection, the committee said.
Netflix currently has 3.3 million paid subscribers. It saw subscription payments exceed 50 billion won in October this year.
Meanwhile, the National Assembly's ICT and broadcasting committee is seeking to have ICT firms report how much funds and personnel they have for protecting customer data.
Revisions to related regulations have been proposed to enable this. The revisions would require ICT companies making more than 1 trillion won in sales to report their investments. Currently, the firms are able to do this on a voluntary basis.
According to data from the Korea Internet Security Agency, only 37 firms voluntarily reported related information after the current system was implemented in 2016.
These companies included the three major telecommunications firms, as well as SK Broadband, NHN and CJ E&M.
Foreign entities such as Google, Netflix and Facebook were not on the list. Local entities such as Naver and Kakao also did not post the information.