President Lee Calls to Review Establishing 'Cybersecurity Czar': "Pan-Government Body Needed"

President Lee Jae-myung said today (November 3) that "a comprehensive prevention system must be established to counter the cybersecurity crisis, which has expanded to a level that severely impacts the national economy and security."

Presiding over a Cabinet meeting at Cheong Wa Dae on this day, President Lee made the remarks, noting, "With the development of artificial intelligence, hacking techniques are becoming more intelligent, advanced, and routine by the day—as seen recently when even the world's largest virtual asset exchange suffered astronomical damage from a cyberattack suspected to be carried out by a hacking organization—revealing clear limitations in the existing security system centered on inspections and post-incident response."

The remark appears to refer to the October 29 incident in which cryptocurrency exchange Binance suffered unauthorized withdrawals of $6.3 billion (approximately 8.4 trillion won) in virtual assets.

U.S. investigative authorities and others point to North Korea as being behind the incident.

President Lee urged, "We must build a system capable of detecting, disseminating, and responding to signs of attacks on vulnerabilities in advance, and fundamentally innovate the security framework to preemptively block evolving hacking threats," adding, "Please thoroughly reinforce security vulnerabilities and key national infrastructure, including major public services, information and communications, energy, and finance."

He continued, "In particular, discussions are needed on establishing a pan-government response organization that encompasses both the public and private sectors," and instructed officials to "actively review forming a powerful and effective 'cybersecurity czar' body capable of coordinating and overseeing scattered security functions."
 
(Photo: Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.