The Personal Information Protection Commission said on the 3rd that it set its 2026 budget at 72.9 billion won. The amount is up 7 billion won from this year and 2.4 billion won from the government plan, and related spending was significantly strengthened under a plan to shift the focus of personal information policy from post-incident punishment to preemptive prevention.
The Personal Information Protection Commission allocated 10.9 billion won for leak and breach prevention and stronger security. It will spend 7.7 billion won to block breaches, 2.4 billion won to support incident investigations, and 800 million won for litigation support. New projects include building and operating a technology analysis center (2 billion won) and establishing a dark web response system (400 million won), putting in place a full-fledged prevention-centered framework.
The research and development (R&D) budget for the AI era was set at 13.3 billion won, up 49.4% from this year. It earmarked 6.1 billion won for developing technologies for safe use of personal information, 3 billion won for training specialists, 2.7 billion won for AI-based protection and utilization technologies, and 1.5 billion won for developing global standards. It also secured 1.4 billion won for international cooperation to strengthen responses to regulations and support corporations expanding overseas.
A total of 11.6 billion won was allocated to build a MyData ecosystem to expand the right to informational self-determination. It will spend 5.4 billion won to guarantee the right to request transmission of personal information and 6.2 billion won to build a MyData support platform. The budget to support safe data use is 6.5 billion won, centered on supporting pseudonymous information utilization centers and building an Innovation Zone cloud (2.9 billion won).
The budget to build autonomous protection systems in the public and private sectors is 3.7 billion won, with plans to raise overall management standards through checks of privacy policies, protection level assessments, and impact assessments.
Lee Jeong-ryeol, vice chair of the Personal Information Protection Commission, said, "We will step up investment in developing safe personal information technologies needed in the AI era and build a system that balances protection and use so people can feel secure."