On April 24 (Friday), the Korea Information Society Development Institute (KISDI, President Kim Dae-hee) and the Korea Communications Commission (Chairman Han Sang-hyuk) hosted an online launching ceremony for the ‘Public-Private Consultative Council on User Protection in the Intelligent information Society.’

During the ceremony, Chairman Ko Hak-soo (Seoul National University) of the Public-Private Consultative Council delivered the opening address, followed by a congratulatory speech given by Chairman Han Sang-hyuk of the Korea Communications Commission. Next, Lee Ho-young, head of the Center for AI & Social Policy (KISDI), gave a status report, after which the members of the Public-Private Consultative Council were introduced, and Professor Lee Sang-wook (Hanyang University) gave the keynote presentation.

The Public-Private Consultative Council is an organization that gathers the opinions of experts to protect users in the Intelligent information society, endeavors to form a consensus on the needs and direction of user protection by sharing information on cases in South Korea and abroad, and works to raise the sense of responsibility. It is a policy network that attracts the participation of public, private and civilian organizations. Henceforth, the council will make presentations of domestic and overseas cases on the principles of protecting users in the Intelligent information society and hold related discussions. Both the discussions and the presentations will be led by people from the civilian sector.

The contents of the discussions will be disclosed to the public by the council in the form of an end-of-year annual report. The sections of the report that deal with case studies on the implementation of each principle will be organized separately and published in a book titled ‘Best Examples of User Protection Principles in Practice’.

As a side note, a recording of the launching ceremony was broadcast online in order to comply with the government requirements on social distancing and non-face-to-face meetings at all official events, given the concerns about spreading COVID-19.