Pecuniary remedy

Pecuniary remedy (금전배상) means a compensation in cash to the victim. In principle, the remedy is restricted to the prohibition or suspension of breach of contract or infringement on the rights and interests of the victim. When the damages are proved in due course, a pecuniary remedy will be given to the plaintiff on an actual basis.

In Korea, financial penalties pay for the protection of privacy. It is quite different from other countries where data breach cases are usually treated as specific torts cases.

Key words
compensation, pecuniary remedy, data breach, collective dispute mediation

Data breach cases
The Korean Personal Information Dispute Mediation Committee ("PICO") provides financial compensation to individuals whose statutory privacy rights are found to have been infringed upon by merchants. In 22 cases reported by PICO during 2003–04, the committee awarded compensatory damages in 17 cases where a breach of privacy rules was found.

Damages ranged from US$100 to US$10,000. A mere misuse of personal information case, for example, reckless disclosure of personal data, usually results in compensation of around US$100. The more serious the privacy invasion is, the more compensation is required. In only a few cases of breach did PICO recommend corrections or other remedies without any payment of compensation.

Examplary cases
A woman specifically requested her mobile phone company not to disclose details of her telephone calls to anyone else. Then she found that a branch of the telephone company had nevertheless disclosed them to her ex-husband, who had produced a copy of her ID card when applying for the details. The mobile phone company was held responsible for professional negligence, and she was awarded 10 million won (equivalent to US$10,000) in compensation for the economic and mental damages.

In another case, a plastic surgeon displayed a movie of a patient’s operation on his clinic’s website. He was required to pay 4 million won (around US$4000). The award would have been increased if she had objected to it during the filming. A translation service company posted a woman’s resume on its website without her consent, as if she was an interpreter employed by them; the company was required to pay 200 thousand won (around US$200) compensation. An insurance company that provided a person’s personal information to another company so that they could solicit business from him was required to pay 200 thousand won (around US$200). Taking into consideration monetary compensation, Korea’s privacy authorities regard privacy violations more seriously than any other data protection agency in the world. We will see later how this unusual privacy agency is doing its work.

Prospects
Under the new Personal Information Protection Act, PICO shall deals with disputes in the private sector as well as the public sector. Collective dispute mediation cases may go to PICO needless to consult lawyers who are soliciting alleged victims on the Internet.

Recently pecuniary remedies have seen a different dimension of incidents as Korean-made on-line games are getting popular cross the border. In April 2006, the Seoul Central District Court held that NC Soft of Lineage II should pay 500 thousand won (around US$500) each to the plaintiffs. The court said that game site operators obtaining commercial profits from many users have a duty of special care to protect the personal information of customers. Though actual damage could not be identified, the defendant should pay damages on account of a gross negligence or fault that it did not preserve users’ personal ID and password by encryption and caused the personal data to be stolen by other customers.