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Google Korea headquarters in Seoul’s Yeoksam neighborhood

Before long, nearly all foreign internet companies operating in South Korea, including Google and Facebook, will have to designate local proxies to comply with domestic regulations about user and privacy protection and respond to government requests for data. Prior to this, most of these companies had refused to comply with government policy on the grounds that they did not have an address or place of operations in the country, which has prompted Korean companies such as Naver and Kakao to complain about reverse discrimination.

The Korea Communications Commission (KCC) has been working on a revised version of the enforcement degree of the new Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection, which mandates that purveyors of information and communication services without an address or place of operations in South Korea must designate a domestic proxy.

The KCC announced on Dec. 12 that businesses subject to this requirement will be those with total sales of 1 trillion won (US$890.7 million) or more in the previous year, those with sales of 10 billion won (US$8.9 million) or more in the previous year in the area of information and communication services, those who store and manage the data of an average of 1 million or more daily users, and those that have been asked to submit their data.

After publishing the proposed legislation and soliciting comment, the KCC is planning to finalize the revised enforcement decree and submit it to the National Assembly. “These rules will apply to all foreign companies that are providing information and communication-related services to Koreans, including Google, Facebook and Twitter,” said an industry insider.

These multinational firms have operations in South Korea with the word “Korea” tacked on to their names, but they remain separate from their headquarters, which are located overseas. Google Korea, for example, is a company that handles Google’s local advertising, among other operations, but it doesn’t qualify as a “purveyor of information and communication services” as defined by the law.

By Kim Jae-seob, staff reporter

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]