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Science and ICT Minister Bae Kyung-hoon mentioned that the government plans to reassess penalties, such as business shutdowns, following the completion of the collaborative public-private inquiry into the KT cyber breach.

At a hearing regarding the Coupang hacking incident, which took place at the National Assembly’s Science, ICT, Broadcasting and Communications Committee on the 2nd, Minister Bae addressed a query from Representative Hwang Jung-a of the Democratic Party of Korea. She asked, “Will you apply penalties such as exemption waivers or business shutdowns once the investigation findings are released?” He replied, “Yes, we will review the imposition of sanctions.” He further stated, “We will disclose the outcomes of the joint investigation team once they are completed.”

Last month, the joint investigation team released preliminary results indicating that KT did not inform the authorities even though they found out that 43 servers had been compromised by malware between March and July of last year. The impacted servers were reportedly holding personal data, such as customer names, phone numbers, email addresses, and device identification numbers.

Moreover, KT was discovered to have inadequately managed femtocells (extremely small base stations) during an unauthorized micro-payment event in August. The investigation team mentioned they plan to carry out additional tests to determine if payment verification data, text messages, and voice calls might also be intercepted through illicit femtocells.