President Lee Jae Myung says South Korea must introduce a system for data-breach class actions, calling on the central data protection authority to expedite related legislation.

Lee made the remarks while receiving a work report from the Personal Information Protection Commission(PIPC) in the central city of Sejong on Friday.

Lee referred to the recent fallout from the massive Coupang data breach, which affected nearly 34 million people, and noted that data leak victims currently face significant hurdles to obtaining compensation through lawsuits due to the complex and costly litigation process.

Earlier, Song Kyung-hee, the commission's chairperson, reported that the agency plans to impose punitive fines of up to 10 percent of total annual revenue on businesses that suffer significant, repeated data leaks and to enable group litigation in such cases.

Lee said data leak violations have not been taken seriously enough because the country’s economic sanctions for such actions are too weak. However, he stressed that in the future, violators will face enormous penalties and be taken down.

Lee called for revising the PIPC’s data leak fines for now to three percent of a company’s highest sales over the previous three years.