How private is private?

Subscribing to anything in South Korea requires a national identity along with highly descriptive imformation about oneself. However, little do we know about what happens to our information and how 'private' our information becomes.

Cyber world is becoming more and more a part of our daily lives. The number of internet shopping malls has been growing vastly, and Koreans go as far as buying house hold items such as soap or toothpaste through the internet. As popularity of these websites inclines little are we aware of the also inclining risks of our private information being exposed.

Two years ago when my friend was visitng me in New Zealand, we got a phoen call from her mother worried to death. Apparently 20 minutes ago a strange man had rung her up saying that he had my friend captured and he demanded money to be posted into his account. It's funny because he even had a girl crying in the background, desperately crying out for mum. Later when my friend's dad investigated the case, the girl crying in the background was a recording and websites were selling personal information to people at a very low price. This incident occurred a number of times in Korea. Motheres were often rung up at home when their children were to be at school or cram schools and worried mothers would often pay the desired amount of money, only to find their daughters knowing nothing about the incident.

These kinds of incidents do make me wonder how private our private information is kept? Websites promise security of our personal information but are these promises really being kept? As correspoding contact between humans and cyberspace increases, what used to be termed private is no longer considered private. So to what extent is our private information being kept private?