Passport Details of South Korean President Lee and 167 Others Sat Exposed Online for Five Months; Police Open Criminal Probe
Passport and other personal details of South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, his wife and senior officials — 168 people in all — sat exposed on a paid website for about five months. Public broadcaster KBS first reported the leak on November 2, and South Korean police said on November 3 that they had formally opened a criminal investigation.
The leaked file, titled “Passenger List (Korea–Belgium),” was uploaded in June, just before Lee's trip to Europe, to a paid website that scans uploaded files for malware. Paying members could view and download files on the site; the passenger list is believed to have been uploaded for just such a scan, and from June 2 it remained accessible to paying members for roughly five months before access was restricted in recent days.
The file contained the Korean and English names, affiliations, job titles, dates of birth, passport numbers and passport issue and expiry dates of 168 people, including Lee and his wife Kim Hye-kyung, Foreign Minister Cho Hyun and National Security Adviser Wi Sung-lac, along with presidential security officers, presidential-office staff and accompanying journalists. They were the passengers aboard the presidential aircraft when Lee visited Belgium and Italy in June and attended the Group of Seven summit in France.
KBS said it alerted the presidential Blue House after learning of the leak. The Blue House said on November 2 that it had been informed in advance of the reporting and had taken countermeasures. A Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on November 3 that the information had been deleted from the site, that the incident was being treated as a leak rather than a hack, that the circumstances were still under investigation, and that passports for all 168 people were being reissued. The presidential chief of staff convened an emergency meeting on November 3 and ordered a full investigation, as a major incident, into how the leak happened and who bore management responsibility.
South Korea has suffered a string of intrusions and data-security incidents in recent weeks. Separately, at a cabinet meeting on November 3, Lee called for a powerful government-wide cybersecurity coordinator, and the National Intelligence Service has begun emergency security checks of more than 2,100 central ministries, local governments and public institutions.
Source: KBS
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：韩国总统李在明出席七国集团峰会（资料图）。照片：European Union，经 Wikimedia Commons（Attribution）。 / Photo: South Korean President Lee Jae Myung at the G7 summit (file photo). Photo by the European Union, via Wikimedia Commons (Attribution).
