'I first learned of it today': Justice minister reacts to handover of travelers' facial data

He added that he was "greatly surprised," and said the ministry would use the data only for immigration control

Minister of Justice Park Beom-kye responds to questions from lawmakers during a parliamentary audit by the National Assembly’s Legislation and Judiciary Committee on Thursday. (Yonhap News)

Minister of Justice Park Beom-kye on Thursday pledged to use facial recognition data from passengers coming and going from South Korea within the minimum scope of immigration control only.

The Ministry of Justice is known to have given 170 million facial images of Koreans and foreign nationals to the private sector without data subjects’ consent as part of a project to build an artificial intelligence (AI) identification tracking system.

Civic groups say the project has infringed on people’s human rights in an unprecedented manner.

Speaking to the National Assembly’s Legislation and Judiciary Committee during the annual parliamentary audit of the administration, the minister said, “I first learned [about the project] today and was greatly surprised,” adding, “Now that I am aware, I will run the project within its minimum scope to prevent abuse in the use of personal information.”

The justice minister was responding to Park Joo-min, a lawmaker with the Democratic Party, who’d asked whether he was aware that the ministry was providing facial data of people arriving at the airport to a company that was developing an AI system.

“The project itself cannot be retracted or canceled because it was initiated through a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Science and ICT,” Park Beom-kye said.

Park added that he would “carefully and thoroughly look into concerns that [the data] might be misused or abused.”

The Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Science and ICT released an explanatory statement on Thursday afternoon asserting that the data had been collected and transferred in a legal manner.

As for the possibility of the private-sector developer using the data for commercial purposes, they said, “The Ministry of Justice plans to restrict the scope of use through deliberations [with the developer] in consideration of national security and other matters.”

Privacy advocates including MINBYUN—Lawyers for a Democratic Society and the Korean Progressive Network Center (Jinbonet) said the project was “already a clear violation of the Personal Information Protection Act” and announced plans to “launch a class action lawsuit for victims both in Korea and overseas.”

By Cheon Ho-sung, staff reporter

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