Reason for proposal and main contents

There is an urgent need to provide countermeasures against cases in which people impersonate others on the phone or social networking services (SNS), leading to property damage or defamation.

Currently, however, we can hardly apply the current law to acts of impersonating another person on the information and communication network, and it is only possible to institute criminal or civil actions in cases where secondary damages have been inflicted. For crimes of defamation on information and communication networks under the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection and fraud-based offenses under the Criminal Act, the punitive provisions are only applicable to cases where defamation and acts of fraud have been committed. The act of impersonation itself cannot be punished under these two Acts. In addition, the Personal Information Protection Act and the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection can punish personal information processors or information and communications service providers who collect and use personal information without obtaining the consent of the information subjects. Therefore, such "personal information processors" and "provider of information and communications services" are limited in scope as they refer to only those who process personal information for business or commercial purposes.

However, even if there are no secondary damages, it has been pointed out that impersonation of another person on the information and communication network itself is a violation of the victim's personality rights, may adversely affect the victim's credit and relationships with others, and may also promote distrust in cyberspace, and therefore needs to be criminalized. In fact, the United States and Canada have newly introduced penalties for impersonation for these reasons.

It will make it a crime to impersonate another person by using his/her name, title, photograph, image, or identity as one's own without the consent of the other person in order to punish those who commit such crimes of impersonation with imprisonment for up to one year or a fine of up to KRW 10 million. It also proposes to prevent secondary damages caused by fraud or defamation while preventing damages caused by impersonation of others on information and communication networks by stipulating this crime as a crime or offense that cannot be prosecuted against the express will of the victim (Newly established in Article 44-7 (1) 6-4 and Article 74 (1) 3-2 of the draft).