A district office in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province, printed residence survey files and gave them to 22 neighborhood block leaders. The records included names, resident registration numbers, household addresses and mobile numbers. The city recovered and destroyed them six days later and says no secondary harm has been confirmed.
The Wonjong 1-dong administrative welfare center in Bucheon's Ojeong district printed the personal data of 17,164 residents covered by the 2026 residence survey and handed it to 22 block leaders at a regular council meeting on Sept. 10. The material was for door-to-door checks on households that had not completed the online survey.
광고 문의 · 300×250The files contained names, resident registration numbers, household addresses and mobile phone numbers. Because registration numbers appeared alongside contact details, the combination carries a high risk of identity misuse.
The city later confirmed the disclosure, recovered all distributed material from the block leaders on Sept. 16 and destroyed it, and on Sept. 17 obtained written confirmations from all 22 that the data had not been used. It says no secondary harm has been confirmed to date.
Why such files went out
The residence survey is an administrative process for confirming actual residency. Households that do not respond online become subject to visits, and surveyors receive a list of them. The question is scope. A visit requires addresses and householder names; printing files that also carried registration numbers is the heart of this case.
Block leaders are resident representatives appointed by local government, not civil servants. Their legal basis and duties for handling personal data differ from those of officials, so the transfer itself is faulted as procedurally improper.
Prevention, and what residents can do
Bucheon said it would raise staff privacy training from twice a year to four quarterly sessions and add special training for field surveyors along with system improvements. Critics note that training is a remedy after the fact, and that system controls limiting print rights and data fields must accompany it.
Residents in the area, including foreign residents, can take practical steps by reviewing enrollment in identity-misuse prevention services and enabling unusual-transaction alerts with their banks. This paper reports the scale, the recovery timeline and the city's account as stated, and leaves the question of further harm for follow-up.
