Seoul: The head of the data protection regulator pledged to impose strong penalties against any legal violations in connection with SK Telecom Co.'s recent network hacking incident involving the leak of subscriber information.

According to Yonhap News Agency, Ko Hak-soo, chairperson of the Personal Information Protection Commission, made these remarks during a policy forum, referring to the leak as a "grave incident" that threatens public trust. Ko emphasized the need for collaboration between the public and private sectors to strengthen the nation's overall personal data protection system in response to the incident.

Ko also called on public institutions and private companies responsible for handling personal data to review their handling processes and develop improvement measures to better protect personal data.

SK Telecom, the country's largest mobile carrier with 25 million subscribers, detected the cyberattack on April 18 and found signs of a significant leak of customers' universal subscriber identity module data. The commission subsequently launched an independent investigation into the carrier's servers last month to explore potential signs of user data leak.