[Editorial] A suspect`s human rights must be protected

The police are investigating how the private financial records of Ji Chung-ho, the man who attacked then Grand National Party chairwoman Park Geun-hye with a box cutter, were illegally leaked to the press. Even investigators had not known about Ji's financial history when the Chosun Ilbo newspaper published a story about his credit card use. It has now become a legal issue. Nine Korea Exchange Bank (KEB) employees who are known to have viewed Ji's records are under investigation, as is the Chosun Ilbo journalist who reported the confidential information.

The police say Ji's records were handed over to the reporter at the reporter's request, but KEB strongly denies its employees leaked them. Where the investigation will go remains to be seen, but it is illegal to leak or disclose personal financial information without personal authorization. The Financial Real Names Transaction Act stipulates that providing, leaking, and/or demanding a person's financial records without his permission or a warrant can win you up to five years` prison time. The police need to find out how Ji's information was leaked and prosecute anyone who broke the law.

What this case shows you is how pathetic financial institutions are about basic awareness and procedures regarding customer data. According to the police, six of the nine KEB employees who viewed Ji's records are not responsible for work that would have required them to have access to that kind of information in the first place. They say that some of them perused Ji's transaction history just out of curiosity. It makes you wonder if that is the average sense of professionalism shared by employees at financial institutions, employees who need to place the highest value on the security of customers` data.

KEB is being terribly irresponsible when it claims that Ji's records were looked at but never leaked. Guaranteeing the privacy of personal financial history requires that people are able to have faith in professional ethics on the part of employees and an institution's system for managing their confidential information. Who can ever trust a bank when employees, who have no official business doing so, peek at and mishandle consumers' financial records? The financial industry must take action in response to what has happened.

Ji's actions shocked Korean society and were criticized by the whole country. Still, a suspect's basic civil rights must be protected, no matter what atrocities he commits. One worries that employees may have thought their behavior was not a problem in the case of someone like Ji. Furthermore, the news media bear a responsibility to stand up for the rights of the accused and monitor abuses of the authorities.

It feels like just the other day that the media was being criticized for the "coercive news coverage tactics" in the initial stages of the Hwang Woo-suk story. If a news outlet violated a suspect`s civil rights by acting illegally, that is an entirely separate issue from "the people's right to know."