Daeryun Law Firm SKT litigation, former Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office Chief Young-Gon Cho supervises

Investigation of tax evasion by large corporations, reputation as an ‘investigative expert’… ‘Corporate-related experts’, including corporate crime
Damage amount set at 1 million won per person... The first round of civil lawsuits was filed on the 26th.
“The only class action lawsuit by a large law firm… We will correct chronic problems and protect people’s rights.”

Daeryun Law Firm, which is in the process of legal proceedings regarding the SK Telecom (SKT) SIM information hacking incident, announced on the 26th that it will take full action by appointing lawyer Cho Young-gon, former chief of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office.

Previously, on the 1st, Daeryun accused SKT CEO Yoo Young-sang and security manager of breach of trust and obstruction of official duties. In addition, as mentioned at a press conference on the 22nd, they announced that they plan to file a civil suit at the Seoul Central District Court at 10 a.m. on the 27th, seeking compensation of 1 million won per person.

As the security system of Korea's largest telecommunications company was disabled, Daeryun viewed it as a serious social problem that went beyond the company's security management responsibility and selected Cho Young-gon, an attorney with extensive related experience, as the general manager of the case.

While serving as chief prosecutor, Attorney Cho led major cases such as the collection of former president's slush funds and the Four Major Rivers investigation. In particular, he led the investigation into tax evasion by large corporations and developed a reputation as a 'investigative expert.' Even after his retirement, he is regarded as an expert in various fields related to corporate crime through his consulting and litigation experience at large law firms.

Furthermore, Daeryun plans to take an organized response to this incident centered on the Special Action Headquarters (Special Department), an internal strategic organization. The Special Department is an organization designed to handle medium to large-scale cases that are difficult to respond to at the individual group level, such as public issues and social disputes, and is increasing the expertise and efficiency of case handling by organizing specialized lawyers appropriate for the field.

In particular, since Attorney Cho serves as the head of the Special Department, it is expected that he will be able to respond more strategically through more organic collaboration with members of the corporate legal group who are analyzing the case.

In the past, customers of U.S. telecommunications companies who suffered large-scale personal information leaks received large amounts of compensation through class action lawsuits. T-Mobile, one of America's top three telecommunications companies, experienced a leak in 2021 where the personal information of 76.6 million customers was leaked. Accordingly, customers filed a lawsuit in court, and T-Mobile ended up paying $350 million (about 459 billion won) to customers, up to $25,000 (about 32 million won) per person.

Daeryun Law Firm believes that the scale of this SKT personal information leak is greater than past incidents. The position is that it has caused realistic inconvenience to the public by failing to fulfill its information protection obligations as a basic telecommunications business operator, and that such inconvenience and anxiety will continue for a considerable period of time in the future, so this is an issue for which it must be held more strictly responsible than in past cases.

Attorney Cho Young-gon said, "Personal information leakage incidents have been repeated for several years, but in Korea, actual punishment or compensation has been minimal, and as a result, the damage is being passed on to the people. Daeryun is the only large law firm that is stepping forward. I will do my best to protect the rights and interests of the people by acting as a representative of the people to correct the chronic problem structure, including the legal structure, to prevent something like this from happening again."

Reporter Park Jae-gwan (paksunbi@fnnews.com)

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