[Digital Today reporter Jin-ho Lee] South Korea's Personal Information Protection Commission has launched an investigation into a personal data leak involving over-the-top video service Tving.

The commission said on June 4 it received a leak report from Tving at 2 a.m. on June 3 and began an investigation.

Tving was found to have filed the report after it detected signs that unauthorised access had been made on June 2 to a database storing users' personal information, resulting in a leak. The leaked information included IDs, names, dates of birth, gender, Connecting Information (CI), Duplicate Sign-up Verification Information (DI), mobile phone numbers, emails, refund account numbers and passwords.

The commission will examine whether the case complies with the Personal Information Protection Act, including the specific circumstances of the leak, the scale of 피해, obligations to take security measures, and obligations to notify and report leaks, through requests for 자료 submissions and on-site inspections. If it finds violations, it plans to impose strict penalties under relevant laws and regulations.

Tving, meanwhile, notified users of the leak through a customer notice a day earlier. The incident was reported to have occurred after an unidentified hacker accessed the database storing personal information and transmitted a personal information file to the outside. The government is determining the case as a serious incident and has formed a joint public-private investigation team to identify the exact circumstances.