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Photo courtesy of Yonhap News |
[Alpha Biz= Kim Jisun] SEOUL, South Korea – October 22, 2025 – LG Uplus Corp., one of South Korea’s leading telecommunications companies, denied allegations that the physical disposal of a company server in late July was related to an ongoing government-led cyberattack investigation, saying the action was part of a scheduled system renewal plan set more than a year earlier.
According to industry officials, LG Uplus decommissioned an account-management server on July 31, roughly ten days after the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) informed the company of a hacking report. The ministry had received a tip on July 18 claiming that information from LG Uplus’s Account Privilege Management (APPM) system and about 40,000 user credentials had been leaked — a claim later covered by U.S. cybersecurity outlet Frack in August.
The MSIT requested LG Uplus to conduct an internal review on July 19. The company responded on August 13, reporting “no signs of intrusion or compromise.”
During a National Assembly Science and ICT Committee hearing this week, some lawmakers raised concerns that major telecom operators may have destroyed or concealed digital evidence during incident investigations. In LG Uplus’s case, criticism focused on its server update and disposal timeline between July 19 and August 12.
In a statement, LG Uplus maintained that the server disposal was unrelated to any cybersecurity incident, explaining:
“The equipment in question had reached the end of its service life and was decommissioned according to a pre-approved schedule. The replacement process began more than a year ago as part of our system migration plan.”
The company added that its new account-management system had been fully rebuilt in February 2024 and that the retired server was part of the final clean-up phase of that transition.
Alphabiz Reporter Kim Jisun(stockmk2020@alphabiz.co.kr)
