Joint Press Statement by Didier Reynders, European Commissioner for Justice, and Ko Haksoo, Chair of the Republic of Korea's Personal Information Protection Commission

In their meeting today, Chairperson of the Personal Information Protection Commission Haksoo Ko and the European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders welcomed the strong partnership between the Republic of Korea and the EU on privacy and personal data flows, and explored possible avenues for further cooperation.

Building on the high degree of convergence between the Korean and EU data protection regimes, the European Commission adopted an adequacy decision for the transfer of personal data from the European Union to the Republic of Korea in December 2021. 

On that basis, personal data travels safely from the EU to the Republic of Korea, without any need for further authorisations or additional transfer mechanisms. Because of its broad scope – covering both the private and public sector – the decision supports cross-border data flows between businesses and facilitates regulatory cooperation. 

The recent reform of the Personal Information Protection Act has further increased the synergies between the data protection frameworks of the Republic of Korea and the EU. Both sides agreed that this opens up new possibilities for even closer cooperation on privacy and data flows. They also agreed to explore ways to further develop the framework for Korea-EU data flows.