It was pointed out during a National Assembly audit that employees of the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA), which oversees responses to cyber intrusion incidents, went on a group workshop at a time when large-scale hacking damages at KT and Lotte Card occurred one after another.
According to materials submitted by Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker Kim Hyun, a secretary of the Science. ICT. Broadcasting. and Communications Committee, to KISA on the 16th, 62 employees held a "labor-management harmony workshop" in Jeju Island from the 18th of last month for one night and two days. The budget spent on the workshop was 10.14 million won, and participants accounted for 12% of the total 500 full-time employees.
Kim said, "The problem is that the workshop schedule exactly coincided with the time when the hacking damages began to come to light in earnest." The 18th of last month, when the workshop began, was the day Lotte Card publicly apologized for the leakage of information on about 2.97 million members and the day KT reported four traces of server intrusion and two suspicious indications to KISA.
Earlier, on the 10th of the same month, the Ministry of Science and ICT, the ministry in charge, held a briefing at the Government Complex Seoul regarding KT's unauthorized small-amount payment incident, and on the 19th, the National Assembly's Science. ICT. Broadcasting. and Communications Committee held a full meeting to address the issue. Subsequently, on the 24th of the same month, the committee held a hearing on the hacking situation targeting KISA and KT.
Kim said, "KISA pushed ahead with the Jeju workshop right after it promised an organization-wide external response," and criticized, "The KISA president, with a complacent awareness, put relieving public anxiety on the back burner." Kim added, "We should see this situation not as a simple internal event issue but as poor management across the entire crisis response system and conduct a thorough inspection."