SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won apologized on Wednesday for a
massive data leak at South Korea’s largest mobile carrier, SK Telecom, whi
ch has caused concern am
ong its 23 million users over t
he possible theft of personal and financial information.
The data breach, which
SK attributed to a ma
ware attack, was detec
ted on April 18 and subscribers have rushed to the carrier’s outlets to replace
mobile phone Universal S
ubscriber 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
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and inconvenience to customers caused by the data breach and vowed to condu
ct 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 aw
ay 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 Servic
e, which it said provided the same level of prevention a
s 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)