Lenient outcome · Comparison Pair · Fraud
Telecom personal-info leak (~25M records) — corporate fine only
Harm
~25 million leaked records
Sentence
₩1.0억 fine
Court
Seoul Central 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
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 · current case
₩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 leak of approximately 25 million customer records from a major Korean telecom yielded a ~₩100M corporate fine and an apology, with no individual executive imprisoned. The same statute (Personal Information Protection Act) routinely results in actual imprisonment for individual defendants who illegally access just thousands of records.
Disparity flags
Sources
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