20 million South Korean bank card users fall victim to personal data leak

The personal data of at least 20 million bank and credit card users in South Korea has been leaked, state regulators said yesterday. It is one of the country's biggest ever breaches.

Many major firms in the country have seen customers' data leaked in recent years, either by hacking attacks or their own employees.

In the latest case, an employee of personal credit ratings firm Korea Credit Bureau has been arrested and accused of stealing the data from customers of three credit card firms while working as a temporary consultant.

Seoul's financial regulators have confirmed the total number of affected users as at least 20 million, in a country of 50 million.

The stolen data includes the customers' names, social security numbers, phone numbers, credit card numbers and expiration dates, the Financial Supervisory Service said.

The employee later sold the data to phone marketing companies, whose managers were also arrested earlier this month, prosecutors and the FSS said.

The information was taken from the internal servers of KB Kookmin Card, Lotte Card and NH Nonghyup Card.