Heads of 5 major banks apologize at national audit over hacking incidents

The chiefs of South Korea's five major banks appeared side by side as witnesses at a parliamentary national audit Monday amid a string of recent hacking incidents in the financial sector, offering apologies and pledging to expand security budgets and staffing. They also announced plans to build AI-based defense systems, citing the growing reality of AI-powered cyberattacks.

The audit, held by the National Assembly's Political Affairs Committee at its Yeouido complex in Seoul, saw the heads of KB Kookmin Bank, Shinhan Bank, Hana Bank, Woori Bank and NH NongHyup Bank testify as witnesses: Lee Hwan-ju, Jeong Sang-hyeok, Lee Ho-seong, Jeong Jin-wan and Kang Tae-yeong, respectively.

People Power Party lawmaker Kim Jae-seop pressed the bank chiefs over how long it took their institutions to detect the recent breaches and the scale of personal data exposed, saying their responses had fallen short. He particularly criticized the banks for setting a passive standard for compensating victims, even though leaked data — including names, phone numbers, annual income and loan details — carried a high risk of being exploited for voice phishing and illegal private lending.

Kim said Shinhan Bank took 15 hours and 26 minutes to detect the intrusion, with the data of 25,729 customers compromised. He also said KB Kookmin Bank and Hana Bank took considerable time to identify their respective incidents.

The bank chiefs bowed their heads in contrition.

"I sincerely apologize to our customers and the public for the concern caused by this incident at a financial institution that must be built on trust," said KB Kookmin Bank chief Lee Hwan-ju. "We will secure sufficient budget and personnel to prevent a recurrence, and will do our utmost to build a security system capable of responding with AI, on the premise that hacking itself will be AI-driven."

Hana Bank chief Lee Ho-seong also expressed remorse. "I am deeply sorry for the distress caused to our customers and the public by the AI hacking damage," he said. "We will expand our budget and personnel and put AI systems in place to ensure this does not happen again."

On compensation, Hana Bank chief Lee Ho-seong said: "No damages have occurred so far, but if they do in the future, we will make sure to compensate for all of them." Hana Bank added that it is also pursuing fee waivers and enrollment in a financial safety insurance product for affected customers.

Banks that had not confirmed hacking damage also raised their alert levels. Woori Bank chief Jeong Jin-wan said his bank had been spared so far but attributed that to good fortune. "Woori Bank has not suffered hacking damage, but I think we were lucky this time," he said. "Given that we receive more than 200 hacking attempts a day, we will continue to strengthen our response framework together with supervisory and financial security agencies."

NH NongHyup Bank chief Kang Tae-yeong pledged to continue upgrading the next-generation integrated security monitoring system the bank built in 2022, with further enhancements planned for this year and next year to bolster its defenses.

Lawmaker Kim also took issue with what he called insufficient execution of information security budgets at some banks. Citing data showing that some banks' actual security spending in 2025 fell well short of their stated plans, he said: "There is a problem of banks inflating security budgets on paper while failing to actually spend the money."

In response, the bank chiefs reiterated their commitment to expanding security budgets and securing more specialist personnel.

The audit also put the issue of branch closures on the table. Kim said the reduction in branches was worsening wait times and access problems in areas with large populations of financially vulnerable groups, including the elderly. The bank chiefs said they had significantly slowed the pace of branch closures in recent months and pledged to review their branch operations in financially underserved areas and revisit their inclusive finance strategies.