Emphasis on payment of compensation from agents to customers
As SKT is over the hump to sign up for new membership
As soon as SK Telecom (CEO Yoo Young-sang) resumes business with new subscribers on Monday, it will receive compensation requests from dealerships that shared the pain. Worse yet, customers and the National Assembly are pressing them to compensate for the damage, which makes them sweat a lot.
According to the news from the telecommunications industry on Wednesday, SK Telecom plans to come up with compensation plans to release to its dealerships soon and deliver them around July 26 or 27. Actual compensation is expected to be made from at least July.
Since the Ministry of Science and ICT's administrative guidance to suspend new operations on May 1, 2,600 T-World stores nationwide, SK Telecom's agency, have not been able to operate new stores through USIM from May 5 to June 23. The new stores resumed operation only for eSIM from June 16, but not a significant portion.
Agencies explain that compensation should be calculated by multiplying the number of days that they have not been able to operate by the expected daily sales that they would have achieved if they had been operating normally. In particular, they seem to expect some consideration for their active cooperation in replacing USIMs.
An agency official said, "SK Telecom said it held a meeting with the distribution network, but there is no active communication."
Another industry that is waiting even beyond the boundary of an agency is "customers." Some 200,000 SK Telecom customers have filed a lawsuit against them through more than 10 law firms claiming that they should be compensated just by the hacking incident. Lawmakers at the National Assembly's Science, Technology, Information, Broadcasting and Communication Committee actively represented customers' voices and demanded SK Telecom as well as the Ministry of Science and ICT to come up with a tangible plan on exemption of penalty.
An official of the National Assembly said, "We asked for the exemption of penalties when announcing the final results of SK Telecom's investigation by the Ministry of Science and ICT's public-private joint investigation team," adding, "There are loud voices calling for the exemption of the penalty."
According to Article 39 of the Personal Information Protection Act, consumers can claim punitive damages up to five times the amount of damages if their personal information is lost, stolen or leaked due to the company's gross negligence. However, no direct damage has been caused to customers since the SK Telecom incident until now. In order to receive compensation, the legal profession argues that it is not easy for a customer to directly prove that he or she suffered damage due to the hacking incident in court.
SK Telecom said that the Customer Trust Recovery Committee is reviewing consumer compensation measures such as penalty issues, and predicted that it will be able to announce the details when the investigation by the public-private joint investigation team is completed.
The amount of compensation that SK Telecom will offer to its dealerships and customers has yet to be determined. If SK Telecom pays 10,000 won to each of its 23 million subscribers, SK Telecom will have to pay an estimated 230 billion won (230 million U.S. dollars).
fun3503@chosunbiz.com