Personal details of roughly 1,000 North Korean defectors living in South Korea have been leaked in a hacking case.

Personal details of nearly 1,000 North Korean defectors were leaked as a result of a cyber attack exposing them to severe threats from Pyongyang.



A similar incident has never happened before, the Unification Ministry said that leaked data includes names and addresses of North Korean defectors.

“We apologise to defectors from the North. We will make utmost efforts to protect their personal information and prevent any recurrence of such an incident”, the ministry said in a statement.

Hackers broke into an archive maintained at a centre that help North Korean defectors settle in the South.

There are tens of such centres in the South that offer support for the roughly 30,000 North Korean defectors.

Threat actors carried out a spear-phishing attack against personnel at the Hana Centre in the North Gyeongsang Province and infected a staff member’s computer with a malware .

“The classified data was leaked through a personal computer.” reads a post published by the AFP.

“It was infected with a malicious code when an unsuspecting staff member opened a mail at the Hana Centre in the North Gyeongsang Province.”

In response to the data leak, North Korean authorities inspected all the computers at Hana Centres, but no other leaks were discovered.

The North Korean defectors have been threatened with death by the regime.

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – North Korea , data breach)

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