Presidential chief of staff Kang Hoon-sik said Monday that the recent large-scale Coupang data breach shows fundamental flaws in South Korea’s personal information protection system and urged government agencies to deliver swift reforms.

At a senior aides’ meeting, Kang said the occurrence of four similar incidents since 2021 reveals “structural blind spots” in national data protection frameworks, according to deputy spokesperson Jeon Eun-su.

Kang said companies publicly claim to enforce strict safeguards while, in reality, “the backdoor is left open,” and instructed the science ministry and the Personal Information Protection Commission to propose institutional fixes, overhaul on-site inspection systems and support companies in strengthening their security capabilities.

He also noted that punitive damages provisions are not functioning in practice, limiting their ability to deter major breaches, and ordered reviews to ensure the system applies effectively when corporate responsibility is clear.

The science ministry has launched a joint public-private task force to trace the cause of the breach, and authorities confirmed that attackers had exploited authentication vulnerabilities to access more than 33 million customer accounts—more than the roughly four-thousand-500 cases Coupang initially reported.