Seoul, Feb 12 (NationPress) South Korea's privacy regulatory body announced on Thursday that it has imposed fines totaling 36 billion won ($24.9 million) on the Korean branches of luxury brands Louis Vuitton, Dior, and Tiffany due to significant customer information leaks.

The Personal Information Protection Commission reached this conclusion during a plenary session held the day before, with Louis Vuitton Korea bearing the brunt of the penalty at 21.4 billion won, marking the highest fine among the three companies for a data breach affecting approximately 3.6 million customers, according to reports from the Yonhap news agency.

The commission revealed that an external entity had unlawfully accessed personal data, including usernames, phone numbers, and birth dates, on three separate instances by infiltrating an employee's device. The agency noted that the company exhibited inadequate security measures concerning remote logins.

Additionally, Christian Dior Couture Korea and Tiffany Korea were fined 12.2 billion won and 2.4 billion won, respectively, after their employees were deceived into providing internal system access to malicious individuals.

Dior experienced a breach impacting around 1.95 million users and was unaware of it for three months, while Tiffany's leak involved the personal data of around 4,600 users, as reported by the watchdog.

The compromised data from both brands included names and email addresses.

In a separate action, the commission imposed a fine of 924 million won on BKR, the operator of Burger King in South Korea, for unlawfully collecting personal data from minors aged 13 or younger without obtaining parental consent.

Moreover, a fine of 642 million won was levied against MGC Global, which runs the popular coffee chain Mega MGC Coffee, for sending marketing messages to customers who had not consented to receive them.

The regulatory body also penalized eight other food and beverage companies for breaching personal information protection laws, according to the report.

In a related note, South Korea's financial regulatory authority announced plans on Thursday to tighten de-listing regulations to expedite the removal of companies failing to meet necessary standards.

This initiative is part of a broader effort to enhance the smaller KOSDAQ market and foster the country's shift towards productive finance, ultimately supporting innovative ventures and startup businesses, as stated by the Financial Services Commission (FSC).

Beginning July 1, companies with a market capitalization below 20 billion won (US$13.8 million) will be removed from the KOSDAQ market, and this threshold will rise to 30 billion won at the start of the next year.