SK Telecom, KT Corp and LG Uplus, South Korea's three major mobile carriers, have agreed to voluntarily revise contract terms that unfairly limited their liability for personal data breaches and damages.
The Korea Fair Trade Commission said Thursday it reviewed the telecom service terms and conditions of the three carriers, identified four types of unfair clauses and asked the companies to correct them voluntarily — a request all three accepted.
![The Korea Fair Trade Commission at Government Complex Sejong in Sejong [Newsis]](https://wimg.heraldcorp.com/news/cms/2026/08/06/news-p.v1.20260806.cc618630f25c46f08f887858c4c3a884_P1.jpg)
The Fair Trade Commission said it conducted a broad review of the carriers' terms and conditions amid a string of recent personal data leak incidents, noting that the telecoms hold and manage vast amounts of personal information as providers of services used by the vast majority of the public.
The review found that all three companies had included exemption clauses limiting their liability in the event of personal data breaches. One prominent example was a provision stating that the company bore no responsibility if communications content or personal information was leaked over an unencrypted Wi-Fi network.
The commission determined that such clauses effectively shifted liability for data breach damages from the service provider to the user, rendering them void under Article 7 of the Act on the Regulation of Terms and Conditions. The carriers were directed to revise their terms so that they bear responsibility commensurate with their own fault — including intent or negligence — allowing liability to be shared reasonably between users and providers.
Clauses limiting or exempting the carriers from liability for damages arising during service provision were also flagged for correction at all three companies. The existing terms had allowed providers to be fully exempted from liability whenever a user was found to be at fault, regardless of whether the provider itself bore any responsibility.
The commission ruled that when both the user and the provider share responsibility, liability must be apportioned according to each party's degree of fault, and that blanket exemptions based solely on user negligence were unfair. The carriers were told to revise their terms to make clear that user fault constitutes grounds for reducing liability, not eliminating it entirely.
LG Uplus will also revise a clause that limited the company's liability for damages related to member account ID and password management to cases involving only intentional misconduct or gross negligence. The commission directed the company to expand the scope of liability to cover damages caused by ordinary negligence as well.
In KT's case, a clause drew scrutiny for treating a user's silence during a set period after being notified of changes to terms or grounds for contract termination as implied consent.
The commission ordered KT to revise the clause so that implied consent is recognized only when users have been clearly informed in advance that their failure to respond within a reasonable period will be treated as agreement.
y2k@heraldcorp.com
