A debate about the legality of disclosing the names of victims who perished in a crowd crush in Itaewon, a commercial district in central Seoul, has persisted for a year following the tragic incident, with authorities yet to reach a conclusion.
The Personal Information Protection Commission has been looking into complaints that two online news outlets breached the law on personal information protection by disclosing the list of victims.
On Nov. 14 last year, the progressive news sites Mindlenews and The Tamsa released a list containing the full names of victims who died in the Itaewon tragedy on Oct. 29, 2022, resulting in some people filing complaints against the two news outlets. The commission has been investigating whether this disclosure can be interpreted as a breach of the law that stipulates the legal protection of personal information.
While the names of the dead are not considered personal information and there have not been any judicial precedents supporting protection of personal information for people who have died, some argue that publicly disclosing the names can lead to personal information infringement of bereaved family members, as was the case with the Itaewon crowd crush.
Several bereaved families asked for the news sites to remove their late family members' names from the list of Itaewon victims. In response, Mindlenews requested identification cards or photos to confirm the ties of the bereaved family members to the victims.
A related law stipulates that information such as resident registration numbers or passport numbers cannot be requested arbitrarily, but it is not a violation of the law if consent has been obtained from the owner of the information.
Police have also been conducting a separate investigation on Mindlenews and The Tamsa over the disclosure of the victims' names. In January, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency conducted a search of Mindlenews' office in Seoul’s Mapo district and the Seoul Metropolitan Government's information system team, which is believed to have leaked the list of the victims to Mindlenews. In April, the Mindlenews CEO's mobile phone was confiscated, and on June 14 and 15, officials of two media outlets were summoned respectively as suspects.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday the bereaved families of the Itaewon crowd crush held a press conference in front of the presidential office in Seoul’s Yongsan district and asked President Yoon Suk Yeol to attend a civic memorial service marking the one-year anniversary of the tragedy. Civic groups and an association of the bereaved families will hold a memorial ceremony at Seoul Plaza on Oct. 29. The total death toll of the incident was 159.
