SK Telecom—South Korea imposed record $97 million privacy fine on SK Telecom for breach exposing 23 million users' SIM data
South Korea's privacy regulator imposed a record 134.8 billion won ($97.2M) fine on SK Telecom for a data breach that exposed SIM card authentication data of over 23 million users -- nearly half the country's population. The company had failed to encrypt 26.1 million SIM authentication keys, leaving them in plain text, and had linked internal and external networks without access restrictions. SK Telecom filed a lawsuit in January 2026 to overturn the fine. A consumer protection body recommended per-person compensation that could total 2.3 trillion won.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data Security | -against | primary | -1.00 |
| User Privacy | -against | primary | -1.00 |
| Overall incident score = | -0.572 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (critical ×2) × confidence (0.57)× agency (negligent ×0.5)
Evidence (1 signal)
Korea Herald reported record $97M privacy fine on SK Telecom for breach exposing 23M users' unencrypted SIM data
South Korea's privacy regulator imposed a record 134.8 billion won ($97.2M) fine on SK Telecom. The company had failed to encrypt 26.1 million SIM authentication keys and linked internal/external networks without access restrictions. SK Telecom filed a lawsuit in January 2026 to overturn the fine.