SK Telecom's brand value nosedives after mass data breach: report

SK Telecom relinquishes the telecommunications crown to rival KT

People walk past an SK Telecom branch in Seoul on June 24. (Yonhap)

The brand value of SK Telecom, the largest mobile carrier in Korea, is believed to have dipped sharply in the second quarter of this year in the wake of a massive hacking attack that was made public in April.

The local brand value assessment firm Brandstock on Monday revealed the top 100 brands in the country, in which SK Telecom relinquished its top spot in the telecommunications sector to rival KT Corp. KT's score on the index jumped from 852.6 to 872.9 compared to the previous quarter, moving it up to the 27th overall spot from 41st in the first quarter.

SK Telecom's score plummeted from 890.1 in the first quarter to 850.1, placing it second among mobile carriers and 40th overall. It ranked a few spots above LG UPlus, which came third among the telecom companies.

SK Telecom said last month that it had lost about 400,000 users since the mass data breach that led to the theft of 9.82 gigabytes of sensitive SIM-related data affecting as many as 26.95 million users, according to a join government-civic investigation announced last month. The a still-unidentified group of hackers is thought to have commenced the cyberattack in June 2022.

The unprecedented scale of the data breach has led to user complaints and a subsequent loss of subscribers. But last week's report indicated that SK Telecom has started to regain some of its customers since June 24.

In terms of overall rankings of local brands, Samsung Electronics' flagship smartphone brand Galaxy and the mobile messenger application KakaoTalk each maintained their No. 1 and No. 2 spots, with KB Kookmin Bank taking the No. 3 spot, rising a notch.

YouTube, the previous No. 3 on the list, fell to No. 4.

Apple's iPhone, the biggest rival of the Galaxy lineup, moved up four spots to No. 5, narrowing the gap with its Korean rival.