By Kim Tae-jong





A person walks past a KB Kookmin Bank branch in Seoul, Monday. / Yonhap

Potentially over a million expatriates have been left out in cold in the largest financial data theft case in Korea's history.

Financial regulators as well as credit card firms and their parent banks have not provided any services for foreign credit card holders to check whether their data was leaked, nor have they offered compensation packages.

According to the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), as of the second quarter last year, seven credit card firms, including KB Kookmin, Samsung, Shinhan and Lotte have about 280,000 foreign customers, up from 240,000 in the first quarter.

"We haven't yet been informed of cases involving foreigners whose personal data was leaked," an official from the FSS said. "But that doesn't mean that foreign residents' personal information was not stolen."

He admitted that the current measures focus on Koreans, as they did not have enough time to take care of foreigners.

Customers of KB Kookmin Card, Lotte Card, NH NongHyup Card and other commercial banks in partnership with them are concerned that their stolen information could be used in financial scams, as many of them have had up to 19 pieces of personal information stolen including their names, phone numbers, credit card expiration dates and related bank accounts.

According to the FSS, about 20 million people's personal information was leaked, which means almost all people engaged in economic activities were victims of the theft, and foreigners are not an exception if they have a credit card from one of the three companies or use financial services from their parent banks.

It is estimated that there are about 200,000 foreigners who have Korean credit cards, but the actual number of foreigners whose personal information was leaked is estimated at over 1 million, as those who use financial services in banks partnered with the card firms are highly likely to be victims of the massive theft. There were about 1.5 million foreign residents in Korea as of last year.

"About half of the Korean population's information was leaked. So we think it's likely that almost all foreigners' data was also leaked," another FSS official said.

KB Kookmin Bank, the banking affiliate of KB Kookmin Card, said that information leaks are estimated to have hit some 970,000 foreign customers and it plans to inform them of the leak.

After the incident was made public, Friday, the credit card firms in question posted a letter of apology on their website and quickly started to allow customers to check whether their information was stolen. Their websites were temporarily down on Monday morning, due to too many people trying to get an access.

But no firm has put up a notice or apology in a foreign language on their Korean and English websites to inform customers from other countries of the theft incident, making it hard for the latter to know what they should do.

"We haven't posted a notice for foreign customers yet," an official from Lotte Card said.

The two other companies also failed to put up any notice and did not even provide information on how many foreign customers were affected.

"We feel sorry but we don't have any additional measure only for foreigners," an official from NH NongHyup Card said. "But we will consider sending a letter or e-mail to foreign card holders soon, after we figure out how many foreign customers' information was leaked."