South Korea vows harsh penalties after 20m have financial data stolen

South Korean regulators promised harsh corporate penalties for data theft yesterday, as angry customers swamped credit card offices for a third day after 20 million people had their financial information stolen.

“If an incident like this happens again, the company in question will be shut and its executives will no longer be able to work in this industry,” said Shin Je-yoon, the head of the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC).

Shin was reacting to South Korea’s largest leak of private financial data – involving three credit card companies and at least 20 million clients in a nation with a population of 50 million. Credit card usage is particularly high in South Korea, where the average adult has four or five cards.

The data was stolen by an employee from personal credit ratings firm Korea Credit Bureau who once worked as a temporary consultant at the three firms. He was arrested earlier this month.

The stolen data included names, social security numbers, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, home addresses, credit card numbers and even personal credit ratings.

Since Monday more than two million victims have cancelled their credit cards permanently or requested new ones. Shin said the FSC would devise harsher punishments and heavier financial penalties on companies and their executives for future security breaches.