On 30 March 2021, the European Commission and the Republic of Korea successfully concluded their negotiations on adequacy. An “adequacy finding” will enable free and safe data flows from the European Union to South Korea. The conclusion of the negotiations allows the European Commission to adopt an “adequacy finding” under Article 45.3 of the GDPR, confirming that South Korea’s Personal Information Act (PIPA) provides a comparable level of protection of personal data to European data protection laws. Such an “adequacy finding” will cover both private and public sector data controllers established in South Korea. The negotiations on adequacy were initiated in the context of the Free Trade Agreement that was concluded between the European Union and Korea. Within the framework of these negotiations, South Korea has enacted a series of reforms to its data protection laws. For instance, South Korea committed to implementing additional safeguards to protect European citizens’ personal data (e.g., introducing the concept of “pseudonymised information”, as well as the “purpose limitation” principle) and streamlined South Korea’s data protection regulatory authorities to one authority, while previously data protection breaches and issues were handled by multiple agencies. These new rules will be binding on companies importing data from the European Union and enforceable by South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC). The European Commission will now launch the procedure for the adoption of a formal adequacy decision. This involves obtaining an opinion from the European Data Protection Board and approval by a committee composed of representatives of the EU Member States. Once the formal decision has been adopted, personal data can flow freely from the EU Member States to South Korea without any further safeguards or authorisations such as binding corporate rules and contractual clauses.
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