Seoul: South Korea's privacy watchdog announced Thursday that it has imposed fines totaling 36 billion won (US$24.9 million) on the Korean divisions of luxury brands Louis Vuitton, Dior, and Tiffany due to breaches in customer data security.

According to Yonhap News Agency, the Personal Information Protection Commission reached this decision during a plenary meeting held the previous day. Louis Vuitton Korea received the largest fine of 21.4 billion won after a data breach affected approximately 3.6 million customers. The breach was attributed to an external hacker exploiting an employee's device, accessing personal data such as user names, phone numbers, and birth dates. The commission criticized the company for inadequate security measures concerning remote logins.

In addition, the regulator imposed fines on Christian Dior Couture Korea and Tiffany Korea, amounting to 12.2 billion won and 2.4 billion won, respectively. These penalties were due to data breaches resulting from employees being deceived into allowing unauthorized access to internal systems. Dior experienced a breach affecting around 1.95 million users, remaining unaware of the incident for three months. Tiffany's breach involved approximately 4,600 users, with leaked data including names and email addresses.

Separately, the commission penalized BKR, the operator of Burger King in South Korea, with a 924 million won fine for collecting personal data from minors aged 13 or under without parental consent. MGC Global, managing the Mega MGC Coffee franchise, received a 642 million won fine for sending marketing messages to customers without their consent.

Additionally, eight other food and beverage companies faced fines for violations of personal information protection laws.