The Court ruled for the plaintiffs, finding that Scatter Lab had used data from around 600,000 users, including roughly 9.4 billion lines of chat conversations, and had failed to obtain clear, meaningful consent. The Court rejected Scatter Lab’s arguments that the data was sufficiently pseudonymized or that the training qualified as “scientific research” and thus exempt from consent requirements. The Court ordered Scatter Lab to pay damages to the plaintiffs of up to 400,000 KRW per person.
This decision is now under appeal by Scatter Lab.