SEOUL, Nov 5 (Reuters) - South Korea has ordered

Facebook owner Meta Platforms ( META ) to pay 21.62 billion won

($15.67 million) in fines after finding it had collected

sensitive user data and given it to advertisers without a legal

basis, Seoul's data protection agency said.

The U.S. tech giant obtained information from about 980,000

South Korean Facebook users on issues such as their religion,

political views and sexuality while failing to seek agreement

from users, the Personal Information Protection Commission said

in a statement on Tuesday.

The information was then used by some 4,000 advertisers,

the agency said.

A Meta Korea official declined to comment.

"Specifically, it has been found that (Meta) analysed user

behaviour data such as pages they liked and advertisements they

clicked on Facebook and created and managed advertising themes

related to sensitive information," the commission said.

This included users being categorised for example as being

North Korean defectors, following a certain religion, or

identifying as a transgender or gay person, the agency said.

Meta had also unfairly declined a request by users to access

personal information and failed to prevent data on about 10

South Koreans from being leaked by hackers, the agency said.

($1 = 1,379.5200 won)