The South Korean Personal Information Protection Commission fined Meta $15.6 million on Monday for giving 980,000 users’ information to advertisers.

Under South Korean law, certain data, including a person’s religious and political beliefs, sexual orientation, gender identity and status as a defector from North Korea, is protected and withheld from processing, the PIPC said in a release Tuesday.

The tech giant collected the information from South Korean Facebook users via their likes and ad clicks and gave it to 4,000 advertisers.

The wrongful data collection took place from July 2018 until March 2022, according to The Associated Press.

The PIPC added that during its investigation Meta stopped collecting sensitive information.

Meta hasn’t responded to a request for comment from The Washington Times. The tech giant’s South Korean office told AP it would “carefully review” the PIPC decision.

• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.