A kindergarten director and a parent fought a legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court. The issue was whether the director could include a child's name and address in a complaint when filing a civil lawsuit, and the Supreme Court found that doing so at that level did not violate the Personal Information Protection Act.
The Supreme Court's Second Division (Presiding Justice Park Young-jae) said on Jun. 1 that it overturned the lower court ruling that had fined kindergarten director A 500,000 won for allegedly violating the Personal Information Protection Act and sent the case back to the Uijeongbu District Court.
A operates a kindergarten in Deogyang District, Goyang, Gyeonggi Province. In Jun. 2022, A provided B's child's name and address and other personal information to a lawyer to file a damages suit, saying B, a parent of a child at the kindergarten, had defamed A. The personal information had been collected in Mar. 2021 when the child enrolled in the kindergarten for the purpose of an "early childhood tuition support grant application." A filed the complaint, prepared in this way, with the Goyang branch of the Uijeongbu District Court.
The first trial found A guilty and imposed a fine of 1 million won. The Personal Information Protection Act allows a personal information controller to use personal information only within the scope of the collection purpose.
The appellate court also found A guilty but imposed a fine of 500,000 won. The appellate panel said, "A complaint is submitted to a court, so the risk of it being provided to a third party is not high," adding, "Given the circumstances under which A filed the damages suit, A appears not to have had a particular sense of impropriety."
The Supreme Court reversed and remanded the case on grounds consistent with acquittal. The court noted that A, while filing a damages suit claiming "B engaged in illegal acts, including posting defamatory messages on a Naver café, causing business losses and emotional distress," listed B's child's name and address in the complaint.
It then found that "B's child's name and address constitute personal information but do not fall under sensitive information that could be expected to seriously invade privacy."
The Supreme Court also said that including personal information in a complaint when filing a civil lawsuit is unavoidable. The court said, "After filing, the defendant can identify B's address under the Civil Procedure Act," adding, "It is hard to view that submitting personal information to the court without going through that procedure caused harm to B beyond what is socially acceptable."