Massive Data Leak Hits South Korean Diplomats
Today we’re setting sports aside to talk about Korea again, and I bring you a story that’s hard to believe: this week, the data of thousands of South Korean diplomats has been leaked, which is insane.
But isn’t there the Hungarian Grand Prix this week? Where’s my F1 preview, Goguma?
There won’t be one, this week has been complicated. We became football world champions and that took up my time. We’ll talk after the race.
Alright, back to the topic. What were you saying about a hack?
This one was big and serious. This week the Foreign Ministry revealed that the data of around 10,000 South Korean diplomats from the National Diplomatic Academy has been leaked. It seems to include critical data such as names, emails, IDs, and encrypted passwords. Still, they say data like national ID numbers, mobile phone numbers, or home addresses weren’t affected, but it’s still very serious.
How could this have happened?
It seems a military-linked academy was the one hacked. The attackers used an unpatched zero-day vulnerability.
Zero-day vulnerability? What’s that? Goguma, talk like a normal person
Okay, okay. A zero-day vulnerability is a type of flaw that doesn’t yet have an available fix. Basically, they attacked before the app developer even detected the flaw. They also indicated that security settings were too lax.
Lax security settings?
Who knows what they mean by that, maybe the password was 1234. But seriously, this second part is more worrying. Come on, Korean officials, South Korea is technically still at war with the North (there’s a signed armistice, not a peace treaty). What are we playing at here? There can’t be lax settings on this. And this isn’t the first major hack in South Korea recently: we’ve had a year of massive leaks, the latest one at Coupang. The government really should take action on this.
Cybersecurity and privacy in Korea remain unresolved issues
From what I see, people here don’t care about cybersecurity at all. For example, a lot of people here use 1234 or 0000 as their phone password. Almost every house here has a numeric access code, usually 4 digits. You’d be surprised how many homes can be accessed from the street with the code 1234. I don’t have data, but from empirical experience, the percentage isn’t small. It seems the 빨리 빨리 (hurry, hurry) culture invades everything and people want it all done now. Many leaks have happened due to procedural errors; for example, the last massive Coupang scandal happened because they didn’t revoke a former employee’s access. Long-term consequences or potential risks really don’t seem to matter to the average citizen. There was much more outrage over the World Cup than over this.
It’s even worse than it seems
Also, reports indicate the vulnerability was exploited for several months. They were really slow to react and block the hacker’s access: apparently they had access to the data from April 2025 to February 2026. Since this is critical information, I think it should have been detected sooner.
Who could be behind this, Goguma?
Honestly, it’s very hard to know. The obvious suspect could be North Korea, or maybe China, who knows. Or it could be a hacker group hired by someone for money. We may never know the truth, or it might take years or decades.
What do you all think? Do you believe this could’ve been handled better? Who do you think is behind this? I’ll read you in the comments.
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