Minister Yoo of the Ministry of Science and ICT pointed out that telecommunications companies should pay more attention to security regarding the 'SK Telecom SIM card information hacking incident.'
On the 24th, Minister Yoo met with reporters after a booth tour at the 'World IT Show 2025' held at Coex in Seoul and said, "Currently, a joint public-private investigation team is conducting an investigation, and it will take about a month or two for the results to come out."
Minister Yoo noted, "In the past, there was a hacking of customer information at LG Uplus, and it seems that the potential for more frequent hacking is increasing," and emphasized, "Now that AI has been incorporated, the attacks could intensify, and in that regard, companies need to focus more on security."
He added, "SK Telecom will address this issue very seriously, but the best approach is to prevent any incidents from occurring in the first place," and stated, "Currently, the public and private sectors are in a process of estimating and confirming damages together, and the incidents must be reported transparently, and we must strive to take measures to ensure that such incidents do not happen again."
Earlier, SK Telecom announced on the 22nd that a SIM card information leakage incident had occurred due to malware. The Ministry of Science and ICT is currently investigating the cause and scale of the incident with a joint public-private investigation team.
On that day, Minister Yoo said regarding the recent candidates for the 6·3 early presidential election announcing AI-related pledges, "I think it's good that people are taking a lot of interest in AI, as it is evidence that they are reading the times correctly." However, he noted, "The U.S. is talking about 700 trillion won and China about 2,000 trillion won, with most of it coming from private funds, and I think it's somewhat inappropriate to spend 100 trillion won or 200 trillion won in national tax."
Regarding the supplementary budget currently being discussed in the National Assembly, he evaluated, "While it is not as much as the draft, more than 1.8 trillion won has been reflected in the AI sector," and stated, "If we include the supplementary budget, we will be spending 3.6 trillion won, which is a substantial investment given the current fiscal conditions."