Issues of Privacy Infringement by Establishing a Contact Tracing System for Infectious Disease and its Legal Solutions: Focused on the Use of Technology-Assisted Contact-Tracing in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Authors:   Korean Constitutional Law Asscciation, Kim Song-Ok 
Published: March 2024

On May 5, 2023, the World Health Organization(WHO) announced that COVID-19 was no longer a “public health emergency of international concern.” The South Korean government also declared the end of the COVID-19 pandemic on the 11th of the same month. After more than three years, the COVID-19 crisis is over. Now is the time to look back on the experience of the past three years and make a comprehensive assessment of the national system for prevention of epidemics. In other words, the assessments are to evaluate the effectiveness of the current system in preventing and controlling the spread of infectious diseases, and to evaluate the constitutionality of the legal basis underlying the system.
During the three years of the COVID-19 emergency, the government’s system for prevention of epidemics has evolved after much experience and criticisms, and Infectious Diseases Control and Prevention Act has been revised several times. In this article, I will focus on contact tracing system among the many systems contained in the Act.
First of all, the contact tracing has been practiced for a long time as part of epidemiological investigations. However, advances in technology have made contact tracing more efficient, faster, and more accurate. Technology-Assisted Contact-Tracing systems can be divided into two main types: the first is the method used in South Korea, which tracks the movement of infected people through location data based on GPS signals, immigration records, credit card usages and etc. and combines them with visitation records to identify contacts. The second is the method used in Europe and the United States to identify contacts by utilizing Bluetooth-based Technology-Assisted Contact-Tracing, which is based on storing contact information using a smart phone app and Bluetooth, and then send a warning message to the stored contacts if they are tested positive for corona. This can be further divided into centralized and decentralized types based on whether the government is involved in verification and identification of contact.
In this paper, I compare and analyze the two contact tracing systems to finally check the contact tracing system in Korea.
First of all, South Korea’s contact tracing system involves the processing of a wide range of personal data by the state. Various personal data is integrated and analyzed through the KCDC’s data processing system. However, there is a risk that the right to the protection of personal data may be eroded through non-transparent data processing. This constitutes a serious violation of the principle of proportionality and the principle of transparency.
On the other hand, contact tracing system via apps and Bluetooth has the advantage of being a privacy-friendly method that minimizes government intervention and excludes the collection of location data. However, this approach starts with the voluntary participation of citizens, and its success depends on their active participation. The basic premise for this method to work is that the app must be trustworthy in terms of privacy protection.
In any contact tracing system, the process of contact tracing necessarily involves the processing of various personal data, so the principles relating to processing of personal data must be strictly observed. This should not be overlooked in the design of the system.