Korea privacy chief visits Busan to shape AI-era data rules

The Personal Information Protection Commission said Thursday that its chair, Song Kyung-hee, toured data-innovation sites in Busan and met regional operators of pseudonymised-data support centres to discuss privacy reforms suited to the artificial intelligence era.

The visit was the commission's third regional trip under the government's "five poles, three special zones" balanced-growth strategy, following Daegu on April 24 and the integrated Gwangju-Jeonnam special city on July 2.

Song began at the Busan Port Authority in the city's Jung-gu district, where officials presented a data project backed by the commission's one-stop pseudonymised-data service and a 2025 pseudonymised-data competition winner that linked land and sea freight information to analyse the national logistics system. She then visited the Busan Eco Delta Smart City in Gangseo-gu to inspect data-driven living, healthcare and smart-home services, and rode an autonomous bus that began trial operations in April.

At a meeting with operators of the regional pseudonymised-data support centres and the privacy innovation zones, the commission took up improvements to the personal information framework, difficulties citizens and industry face under current rules, and ways to support safe data use. Seven pseudonymised-data support centres operate nationwide, and the commission has designated ten privacy innovation zones. The Busan support centre, run by the Busan Technopark with state funding, opened on Aug. 29, 2022.

The commission first issued guidelines on personal information protection in smart cities in 2021.

"In the AI era, how safely data is used is becoming a more important task than how much of it is secured," Song said. "The commission will push ahead at speed with the institutional improvements needed for new ways of using data that are hard to judge under existing rules, and will actively support the pseudonymised-data support centres and privacy innovation zones so they can grow into bases for AI-era data innovation grounded in public trust."