재판 절차에서 다른 사람의 개인정보가 담긴 자료를 제출함으로써 발생하는 개인정보 침해의 바람직한 구제책 ― 하급심 판례를 통하여 본 가벌성 여부, 비범죄화 필요성 및 바람직한 구제책의 모색 ―

Abstract

The prominent feature of Korea's Personal Information Protection Act is that it charges broad and strong criminal penalties for personal information infringement. In recent, the cases are often found where the parties to the litigation and other related persons during the court proccedings submitted data containing other people's personal information to the court was evaluated as 'an act of providing or leaking another person's personal information to a third party that is subject to criminal penalties. The verdicts of the courts of 1st instances and courts of appeals on this matter are not unified, and it seems that Supreme Court decision that addressed this matter has not yet been issued. In the meantime, the public awareness of the fact that submitting such data to the court during litigation may result in infringing on the personal information of others, and that this may be subject to civil damages and even criminal punishment, is still very insufficient. In this paper, first, the history and main contents of the Personal Information Protection Act, the provisions on criminal punishment, fines and surcharges as sanctions for violations of the law, and the special provisions of civil litigation as a remedy are outlined. As a result of examining the judicial precedents of the courts of 1st instances or courts of appeals and some hypothetical cases, without taking into account of the characteristic of the personal information infringement that may occur during the trial process and the relationship with the lawyer's duty of confidentiality, criminal punishment for all cases of information infringement that may occur during the court trial, may hinder the reasonable use of personal information, restricts freedom, and violates the principle of subsidiarity of criminal laws. As a solution to this, ① reducing the subject of criminal punishment and the target of punishment for personal information infringement, ② broadening the scope of application of exceptions and revising relevant laws and regulations, ③ setting the punishment regulation by adding conditions for prosecution, such as a crime indictable upon complaint are to be considered.