Internationally, countries have established comprehensive legal frameworks to govern both foreign information collection and foreign interference, embedding safeguards against abuse and ensuring democratic oversight. By contrast, South Korea’s current Regulation on Cybersecurity Services (Article 6-2) allows the National Intelligence Service (NIS) to conduct preemptive overseas tracking and neutralization without sufficient legal safeguards or statutory authority, making it unconstitutional under Article 37(2) of the Constitution. Moreover, South Korea lacks a clear legal framework to address foreign interference via online manipulation, raising risks of conflating foreign campaigns with domestic misconduct. To close these gaps in (1) foreign information collection, South Korea must reinforce provisions such as Article 6-2 of the current Regulations on Cybersecurity Services and incorporate them into the higher-level National Intelligence Service Act as the legal basis. In (2) foreign interference, a new legislation should be enacted, which is consistent with the approach of similarly situated countries.

South Korea’s 2024 National Cybersecurity Strategy needs an adequate review of the previous strategy and a process for gathering stakeholder input during its revision. The Harvard Belfer Center’s assessment also ranked Korea the lowest among seven countries—the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Japan, Singapore, and the Republic of Korea—, pointing out insufficient specificity and a lack of concrete policy proposals. In particular, the exclusion of key actors such as industry, civil society, and local governments, as well as weak accountability and performance evaluation, were highlighted as shortcomings. Under the Lee Jae-myung administration, the new National Cybersecurity Strategy should be more comprehensive and concrete by incorporating the contents developed by the National Cybersecurity Basic Plan.

This article is an English Summary of Asan Issue Brief (2025-27).

('이재명 정부의 사이버 안보 법·전략에 대한 제언’)