Personal Privacy Versus People’s Right To Know Part 2

 written by  20725 Jung Jaewon

In part two of the five part series titled "Personal Privacy Versus People's Rights to Know," the Opinion department looked into how businesses were affected by the right to know.

The Right to Know Has a Bad Influence on Stores

 

For people’s safety, informing the route of infected people affected individuals and the surrounding buildings and stores that did nothing wrong in preventative regulations.

Many stores greatly suffered in March and April, when the number of the infected population increased nationwide. People were reluctant to go to those stores when the routes of infected people were announced in the general area.

The problem was that many stores have seen a sharp decrease in the number of people coming. Even though the infected people did not go through them, the stores nearby the infected route lost money.

Last March, a group of infected people went to a restaurant in Daegu for about three minutes and left. The location and name of the store were disclosed to the public since the infected people were there. The owner suffered a significant economic loss since their business was known to be a restaurant visited by infected people.

The main problem was that the store’s information was still exposed online, which caused many people not to go there. People were afraid that there could be more infected people there, even if a confirmed patient had been discharged from the hospital a week later. 

Although the new “Right to Forget COVID-19 Damage” has appeared, erasing store information occurs online two weeks later. Many stores are still damaged by the people’s rights to know through the butterfly effect.

 

In My Opinion

 

I think that the right to know does not consider nearby stores. Public perception is so critical that people can still believe untrue information easily by what is online.

Even though infected people visited there, the store typically sanitizes and cleans thoroughly.  However, people do not know whether the store is dangerous or not when it comes to infection.

In this situation, online information is a key cause for people to act. People tend to be reluctant to go where infected people have visited, not considering the exact time.

These business owners and employers are also South Korean. Their privacy deserves to be protected by the South Korean Constitution. Unless the government will provide as much economic aid as the businesses have lost, it is harmful to a lot of business owners and employers to consider this issue rashly.