Recording job interviews in South Korea: the Communications Secrets Act, PIPA and PIPC hiring guidance

In South Korea, a recruiter may record a job interview they take part in: the Protection of Communications Secrets Act bans recording "non-public conversations between others," and the Supreme Court has held that a participant's own recording is not covered. The risk is a third party, because the same court held that someone outside the call who records with only one side's consent breaks the law, which matters for note-taking bots. The Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) then governs the recording and transcript, and the Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) has issued hiring guidance. As of October 2026, tell candidates, ask, and delete recordings once the decision is made.

This page adds South Korea to our country series alongside Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong. It is for recruiters, agency consultants and hiring managers who interview candidates in Korea by video or phone, including from the US. Quotations from Korean statutes, court decisions and guidance are our translations.

South Korea's rules at a glance

Is it legal to record a job interview in South Korea?

Yes, for a participant. Article 3(1) of the Protection of Communications Secrets Act (PCSA) says that, except as the law allows, no one may intercept telecommunications "or record or listen to non-public conversations between others," and article 14(1) repeats that no one may record such conversations or listen to them "using electronic devices or mechanical means." Article 16(1) punishes violations, and disclosing what was obtained, with one to ten years' imprisonment and up to five years' suspension of qualifications. Article 2(7) defines interception as acquiring or recording the contents of telecommunications "without the consent of the parties."

The Supreme Court has drawn the line twice. In 2006Do4981 (October 12, 2006) it held that article 3(1) means "a third party who did not originally take part in the conversation must not record" what others say; where one of three people in a conversation records it, the other two people's words "cannot be called a conversation between others" in relation to the person recording. In 2002Do123 (October 8, 2002) it held that a party to a phone call who records it without the other side knowing is not intercepting, but that a third party who records a call "even with the consent of one of the parties to the call" violates article 3(1) if the other party did not consent.

What that means for AI note-taker bots

A recruiter recording their own interview is on the safe side of 2006Do4981. A note-taking bot run by another company that joins the call and records it is closer to the third party in 2002Do123, who recorded with only one side's consent. We found no Korean decision on AI note takers, but given the penalty, the safe practice is to tell the candidate a bot or service is recording and get their consent before it starts.

What does PIPA require for the recording and transcript?

The Personal Information Protection Act applies to every step:

• Purpose and minimum (articles 3 and 16): make the purpose clear and collect only "the minimum personal information necessary for that purpose," and the processor bears the burden of proving it was the minimum.
• Lawful basis (article 15(1)): among others, consent, or where collection is necessary "to take measures at the data subject's request in the process of concluding a contract."
• Consent notice (article 15(2)): when relying on consent, tell the person the purpose, the items collected, the retention period, and their right to refuse and any disadvantage of refusing.
• Sharing (article 17): giving data to a third party, such as a client company, needs the person's consent with its own notice items, unless one of the listed legal bases applies; the contract basis is not one of them.
• Sensitive information (article 23): information on beliefs, union or party membership, political views, health and sex life may be processed only with separate consent or where a law requires or allows it.
• Vendors (article 26): outsourcing processing, such as transcription, must be in writing, the outsourced work and the vendor must be disclosed, and the vendor must be supervised.
• Destruction (article 21): destroy personal information "without delay" once it is no longer needed, unless another law requires keeping it.

What does the PIPC's hiring guidance say?

The PIPC's Personal Information Protection Guideline: HR and Labor (revised January 2023) covers recruitment step by step. It says that collecting "the minimum personal information necessary for the hiring process," as part of concluding an employment contract, does not need the applicant's consent; that sensitive information may be collected only when truly necessary, with consent or a legal basis; that providing applicants' data to a third party without consent or a legal basis is prohibited; and that outsourcing to recruitment agencies must be in writing, with training and supervision. Interviewers should be trained in advance to collect only the minimum.

On applicants' rights, the guideline says employers should let applicants view personal information such as test scores, but "matters such as the interview process and content, whose disclosure would make fair performance of duties significantly difficult, may be withheld." And where hiring is run through a fully automated system such as AI, the employer should make clear the profile the system selects for and, on request, have a recruiter review whether the decision was appropriate and explain the result.

How long can you keep hiring records?

For employers with 30 or more regular workers, the Fair Hiring Procedure Act applies (article 3). Article 4-3 bars asking applicants to state, or collecting proof of, appearance, height, weight, home region, marital status, property, or family members' education, occupation and property when the job does not need it. Article 11 requires returning application documents to rejected applicants who ask (documents submitted through a website or by email, or volunteered without a request, are excluded), keeping them for a return period the employer sets between 14 and 180 days after the decision (Enforcement Decree, article 4), and then destroying them under PIPA.

A second rule pulls the other way. Article 33 of the Equal Employment Opportunity and Work-Family Balance Assistance Act requires employers to keep documents set by decree for three years, and article 19 of its decree includes documents on recruitment and hiring. The PIPC's HR guideline reads this as covering the hired candidates' documents and material the company itself produced in the hiring process. Decide with counsel whether your written evaluations fall in that category, keep those for three years if so, and do not keep raw audio longer than the decision needs.

What about AI scoring and automated decisions?

Article 37-2 of PIPA gives a person the right to refuse a decision made by "a fully automated system (including a system applying artificial intelligence technology)" that significantly affects their rights or obligations, with exceptions where the decision rests on consent, a legal requirement or a contract, and the right in every case to ask for an explanation. The PIPC's guide to data subjects' rights on automated decisions (September 2024) gives hiring examples: rejecting an applicant by analyzing their data "only through an AI interview" is an automated decision, and so is an evaluator only formally confirming AI-generated scores, while a hiring committee that weighs AI output together with application documents and other factors before deciding is not. Keep a person in the decision, and say so in your notice.

Does monitoring law apply to your interviewers?

Yes, in larger workplaces. Under the Act on the Promotion of Workers' Participation and Cooperation, businesses with 30 or more regular workers must have a labor-management council (article 4(1)), and "installation of worker monitoring equipment in the workplace" is one of the matters it must consult on (article 20(1)14). A system that records and analyzes every interview also records the interviewers, so raise it with the council first.

What if you interview from the US or use a US vendor?

Your side of the call is governed by your own state's law; see two-party consent states. For the data, article 28-8 of PIPA prohibits transferring personal information abroad, including outsourcing and storage, unless an exception applies: separate consent after telling the person the items, the destination country, the timing and method, the recipient and its purpose and retention; outsourcing or storage needed for a contract and disclosed in your privacy policy or notified to the person; a recipient with a certification the PIPC recognizes; or a country the PIPC has found equivalent. A foreign business without an office in Korea that meets the decree's thresholds must also appoint a domestic agent (article 31-2).

Interview Signal, for example, runs on the interviewer's own computer with no bot in the call and shows a read-aloud consent line with a one-click pause; it sends audio to a speech-to-text provider in short chunks without retaining it. Your notice should still cover that processing, and the transcript is personal information. More vendor questions are in is it legal to use AI note takers in interviews.

A consent line for interviews in South Korea

면접을 시작하기 전에 안내드립니다. 답변을 정확하게 기록하기 위해
이번 면접을 녹음하고 [소프트웨어로 텍스트로 변환]하려고 합니다.
수집 항목은 음성과 답변 내용이며, 이번 채용 절차에만 사용하고
[고객사 / 담당자]에게만 제공하며, 채용 절차 종료 후 [기간] 이내에
파기합니다. 동의하지 않으셔도 되며, 동의하지 않거나 중간에 중단을
요청하셔도 채용 결과에 불이익은 없습니다. 동의하십니까?

(Before we start: to record your answers accurately, I'd like to record
this interview [and convert it to text with software]. We collect your
voice and your answers, use them only for this hiring process, share
them only with [client / role], and destroy them within [period] after
the process ends. You don't have to agree, and declining or asking to
stop part way will not count against you. Do you agree?)

The line covers the four article 15(2) items and names the recipient for article 17. More wording is in the interview recording consent script, and the candidate data access requests guide covers requests under article 35.

Checklist before you record interviews in South Korea

• Recording made by a participant, or every party's consent obtained when a bot or separate service records.
• Purpose, items, retention and the right to refuse explained before recording.
• Separate consent before sharing with a client or sending data abroad.
• Questions kept off the topics in article 4-3 of the Fair Hiring Procedure Act and off sensitive information.
• A person makes the hiring decision; AI output is one input, and the notice says so.
• Labor-management council consulted where the tool also records interviewers.
• Return period set and told to applicants; audio destroyed once the decision no longer needs it.