Chairman of South Korea’s SK Group Apologizes for Massive Data Leak at SK Telecom

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won apologized on Wednesday for a massive data leak at South Korea’s largest mobile carrier, SK Telecom, which has caused concern among its 23 million users over the possible theft of personal and financial information.

The data breach, which SK attributed to a malware attack, was detected on April 18 and subscribers have rushed to the carrier’s outlets to replace mobile phone Universal Subscriber Identity Module (USIM) cards, which the company is offering free of charge.

Speaking publicly for the first time since the news, Chey apologized for the concern and inconvenience to customers caused by the data breach and vowed to conduct a sweeping data security review involving outside experts.

“What I realized over this is that we’ve considered it an IT security matter and had people in that area handle it,” Chey said when asked what he personally took away from the incident.

“I believe we need to look at this as a matter of national defense, not just (data) security.”

SK Telecom has urged customers to sign up for its USIM Protection Service, which it said provided the same level of prevention as replacing a USIM card. Chey said he has signed up for the service but has not had his USIM card replaced yet.

(Reporting by Jack Kim, Heekyong Yang; editing by Ed Davies)