Korean civic group prepares class action lawsuit against KakaoPay for leaking personal information to China

A civic group that sued the Korean cashless payment service KakaoPay, which is suspected of leaking personal information of 40 million people to China's Alipay, has filed a collective damages lawsuit.
On the afternoon of the 9th, lawyer Park Ju Hyun (representative of the Free Lawyers Association), who is the defense lawyer for Oh Sang-jung, the president of the Free Korea Defenders Association, held a press conference at Suseo (Wednesday), Seoul.
Ahead of the scheduled investigation of the accuser at the police station, the police said, "Providing the personal information of a Korean citizen without permission is like selling out a Korean citizen to a foreign country," and "We will not only punish this severely, but also the victim."
Prior to this, the Financial Supervisory Service had revealed that KakaoPay had violated the privacy laws of 40.45 million customers for over six years since April 2018 without their consent.
The company announced that it is investigating allegations that it provided approximately 54.2 billion pieces of personal credit information, including Kao Account IDs, mobile phone numbers, email addresses, and subscription and transaction histories, to China's Alipay.
After this became known, the civic group Free Korea Defence Corps filed a complaint on the 16th of last month against KakaoPay CEO Shin Won-geun and others for allegedly violating the Act on the Use and Protection of Credit Information.
Oh, who was questioned about this as an accuser, said, "Personal information of Korean citizens has been leaked overseas, and we don't even know how that information is being used."
He explained, "Rather than allowing the ongoing large-scale leaks of personal information to continue unchecked, we need to seriously consider a mechanism for effectively applying the law."
The defense lawyer, Do Tae-woo (representative of the Association of Advanced Lawyers), said, "China's Communist government controls companies so deeply that it cannot be compared to a free system.
"It is no exaggeration to say that the information provided by Kaopei has given the Chinese Communist Party full access to how most of our citizens are spending their wallets," he said, adding, "Although there has been a delay, we will uncover the truth through a thorough investigation."
"We need to clarify who is responsible and take measures to prevent a similar incident from happening again," he said. In response to these allegations, KakaoPay said that it has a trustee relationship with Alipay through the Personal Credit Information Processing Commission.
They also argue that separate customer consent is not required. In addition, the encryption level is high and personal information is difficult to identify.
They countered that they could not find any evidence to support the fact that a trusteeship contract had been concluded.