JK Paul Rhee

Paul Rhee is a senior applied scholar specializing in data protection, IT governance, and regulatory compliance, with over fifteen years of professional and research-oriented experience across international technology, finance, and digital infrastructure sectors. He holds a Master of Science in Management from the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign and a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting and Finance from the University of Canterbury, supported by extensive professional certification and hands-on governance leadership.

His scholarly and applied expertise centers on data protection law, privacy governance, cybersecurity regulation, and compliance frameworks, including GDPR, PIPA, CCPA/CPRA, PCI-DSS, ISO27001, ISMS-P, and related international standards. Paul currently serves as Data Protection Officer and Compliance Manager for Samsung Private Cloud at Harman Connected Services, where he designs and leads corporate compliance frameworks, oversees regulatory audits, and advances organizational compliance maturity through structured governance models.

Previously, Paul held senior roles in global organizations such as Blackhawk Network, Volkswagen Financial Services, Estée Lauder Companies, Riot Games, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, contributing to cross-border regulatory compliance, IT risk governance, enterprise architecture, and privacy-by-design implementation. His work integrates regulatory interpretation with operational execution, offering a practitioner-informed scholarly perspective on how legal norms and technical systems interact in complex digital environments.

As an ISO27001:2022 Certified Lead Auditor with multilingual proficiency in English and Korean, Paul brings a comparative, transnational perspective to issues of data governance and digital regulation. His profile reflects a strong alignment with applied scholarship in technology law, privacy regulation, and institutional compliance, positioning him as a scholar whose work bridges theory, policy, and real-world implementation