State-Run KEPCO Reports Personal Data Leak Affecting 24,000 Employees

SEOUL, Oct. 4 (Yonhap) -- The personal information of some 24,000 employees at the state-run Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) has been leaked, the company said Sunday, the latest in a series of personal data leaks at corporations.

"We became aware that the personal information of employees was exposed on an external web site at around 3:59 p.m. Thursday," KEPCO said in a statement.

The leaked information includes their names, job positions and telephone numbers but does not include sensitive information, such as their resident registration numbers, the company added.

KEPCO said in the statement it has since notified affected employees and completed deleting the leaked information at around midnight Friday.

Customer information, stored in a separate system, was not compromised.

The case comes after several major financial firms, including Hana Bank, KB Kookmin Bank and Shinhan Bank, recently suffered back-to-back leaks of customer information in hacking attacks.

A KEPCO official said the company is verifying the exact cause of the incident and that the data leak appears to be unrelated to artificial intelligence (AI)-related hacking attacks at financial firms.