Strict outcome · Comparison Pair · Fraud
Civil servant — 1y 6m for accessing 5,000 personal records
Harm
~5,000 records accessed (no monetary motive)
Sentence
1y 6m
Court
District Court
Guideline
—
Comparison thesis
5,000 records by one civil servant: 1y 6m prison. 25 million records by a corporation: corporate fine.
Strict outcome · current case
1y 6m
1y 6m actual imprisonment
Civil servant — 1y 6m for accessing 5,000 personal records
Public official · Harm: ~5,000 records accessed (no monetary motive)
Lenient outcome
₩1.0억 fine
Corporate fine only — no executive imprisonment
Telecom personal-info leak (~25M records) — corporate fine only
White-collar · Harm: ~25 million leaked records
When the harm is to data, individual liability scales linearly with records accessed; corporate liability scales toward an apology and a one-time fine. The same Personal Information Protection Act, applied at very different scales of personhood.
Case summary
A civil servant who accessed approximately 5,000 personal records of strangers via the public-administration system over 6 months — purely out of curiosity, with no monetary motive — received 1 year and 6 months of actual imprisonment under the Personal Information Protection Act.
Disparity flags
Sources
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