Nearly 27,000 South Korean iPhone users are suing Apple for $26 million in a class action lawsuit for alleged privacy violations over the collection of user location information.

Each claimant is seeking 1 million won ($932) in damages, Kim Hyeong-seok, one of their attorneys, said Wednesday. Kim was awarded 1 million won in June over iPhone privacy and has since led online preparations for a class action suit against Apple and its South Korean unit.

"The suit accuses Apple of breaching articles 10 and 17 of the constitution that ensure pursuit of happiness and protection of privacy, and the South Korean law on protection of location data," a spokesman for Kim's firm Miraelaw told AFP.

The civil suit filed Wednesday listed 26,291 plaintiffs, 921 of them minors whose parents must consent to their joining the litigation.

"We... electronically filed a suit seeking compensation from Apple and its South Korean unit for emotional damage caused by illegal location tracking by Apple's iPhone," the law firm added in a statement.

Apple has faced criticism after it revealed in April that its iPhones were storing locations of nearby cellphone towers and Wi-Fi hotspots for up to a year. The tech giant also revealed that a software bug caused iPhones to continue to send anonymous location data to the company's servers even when location services on the device were turned off.

The Korea Communications Commission said in early August that it would order Apple to pay a 3 million won fine for violating the country's location information laws.

The regulator's decision "cleared a lot of doubts" on whether the popular smartphone's location-tracking feature was against the law, Miraelaw said.

Apple has since said that it will no longer store the data on phones for more than seven days and has released a free software update to fix the bug.

Kim said that he expects the first hearing in the case to take place in October or November.

Apple Korea spokesman Steve Park in Seoul declined to comment.