South Korea's Personal Information Protection Commission said it conducted follow-up implementation checks on companies found lacking in a 2025 privacy policy evaluation. It recommended improvements for 5 operators found to be weak in ensuring data subjects' rights and operating domestic representatives.

The commission said it notified companies rated "inadequate" in the 2025 evaluation of their results to help them make voluntary improvements. It also provided tailored on-site support, with expert members who took part in the evaluation visiting worksites of applicant companies to explain shortcomings and specific ways to improve.

It then checked whether improvements were implemented by reviewing whether privacy policies were updated and examining operation of channels for exercising data subject rights, operation of domestic representatives, and accessibility of privacy policies on web and mobile apps.

The commission said overall conditions improved, with companies that received on-site feedback in particular reflecting more clearly in their privacy policies the purposes and retention periods for personal information they actually process.

The commission said it recommended improvements after confirming that some companies still needed additional steps, despite corrective actions, in terms of practical exercise of data subject rights and operation of domestic representatives.

Wrtn Technologies did not respond to inquiries on exercising rights. Tesla Korea and DeepSeek replied to inquiries from South Korean users in English and Chinese, respectively.

On domestic representative operations, OpenAI and Nike provided a separate email address when contacted by phone, but were found not to have replied to the inquiries.

The commission said it additionally found shortcomings including partial mismatches between the legal basis stated in privacy policies and actual processing methods, complicated access routes to privacy policies, and failure to disclose previous privacy policies. It said it will individually notify the organisations of the inspection results and plans to continue encouraging them to make their own improvements.

Ko Nak-jun (고낙준), director-general for prevention, mediation and adjudication at the Personal Information Protection Commission, said, "We will strengthen follow-up checks and tailored support so that privacy policy evaluations do not stop at simple assessments but lead to real improvements in the level of personal information protection." He added, "We will also continue to check and improve matters that hinder the exercise of data subject rights."