The office of South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol has confirmed that it believes North Korea hacked into the emails of one of its staff members. The hack of an unidentified member of the presidential staff’s personal email account occurred in the run-up to a three-day visit to Europe in November, where Yoon met British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, King Charles, and French president Emmanuel Macron.
While some may think that the hack of a personal email account is not a serious issue, the office has confirmed that the staff member in question had violated security protocols by using the personal email account for official duties. In other words, sensitive official information was being forwarded to and from a personal email account.
“We detected the case in advance of the visit and took necessary measures,” President Yoon’s office said in a statement to reporters. “It’s not that the presidential office’s security system got hacked.”
Local media have quoted a government source as saying that Yoon’s trip schedule had been accessed by the hackers, and that messages sent by the president had also been stolen. It is unclear how precisely the staff member’s personal email account was hacked, but it is believed to be the first time that North Korean hackers have successfully hacked a member of the South Korean president’s team.
North Korea has a history of engaging in cybercrime, using the internet to steal large amounts of cryptocurrency to fund its nuclear weapons program. The South Korean government has stated that the security breach was detected before the president’s trip to Europe had begun, and that measures were taken to bolster security. These measures included raising awareness amongst office workers of cybersecurity issues to ensure similar mistakes did not happen again in the future.