South Korea’s Shinhan Card Data Breach Affects 192,000 Merchants

Shinhan Card disclosed an internal data leak affecting about 192,000 franchised merchants after an employee allegedly transmitted merchant contact data to a recruiter. The exposed records mainly include mobile phone numbers (≈180,000), around 8,000 name-and-phone pairs, and a smaller number of records with birthdates and gender; the company reports no evidence of card numbers, account details, or national ID exposure, has reported the incident to the Personal Information Protection Commission, and is strengthening internal controls while warning merchants to watch for phishing.