South Korean telecommunications companies and medical institutions will be allowed to obtain personal administrative information that is currently available only to administrative agencies and financial corporations in the country.

“Korea still lags behind in effective data use and building the related industry ecosystem due to lack of quality data and limited access despite many efforts,” Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said Wednesday at an inaugural meeting of the National Data Policy Committee at LG Science Park in western Seoul. The county hopes to vitalize its data value chain with MyData’s wider accessibility and private sector-designed guidance framework for data distribution and exchange, he added.

Under the latest revision in data regulations, public MyData, a government-led service that allows citizens to manage personal information from different institutions on one platform, will be allowed for use in not only administrative agencies and financial firms but also medical institutions and communications companies.

Private data combination specialist institutions, like public ones, will be allowed to combine their own data with those of other institutions. They can also provide such data to others.

The government will also speed up efforts to improve regulations in new industry sectors including metaverse and over-the-top services. The Ministry of Science and ICT and Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism plan to come up with a guideline that distinguishes game and metaverse content by this year to ensure wider use of metaverse, which currently belongs to game product. Metaverse will be excluded from the game classification so that the government can use metaverse services in winning international events in the country such as the 2030 World Expo in Busan.

Korea will also enforce the new OTT content self-rating classification system that omits the seven-day content evaluation process to expedite the release of new programs at home and abroad. It will also allow operations of self-driving cars within parks and safety-approved autonomous navigation robots on sidewalks, which is aimed at digging out new future growth engines in the delivery service market and improve the mobility of the elderly and disabled people at parks.

By Woo Soo-min, Seo Dong-cheol, and Lee Eun-joo

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]