Credit card details on 20 million South Koreans stolen | Hacker News Reader

Credit card details on 20 million South Koreans stolen

bbc.co.uk

39 pointsowlmusic9 comments

This story is worth being on the frontpage just for that picture. I know it's a common tradition in east asian countries for people in power to be overtly responsible for the failure of operations under their command, but just imagine if this was a western country.

We have such a terrible culture of not owning up to problems that were within our reach to prevent. A western leader of a company would never be that publicly humble about a mistake of an employee, most don't even appear in the news with a picture, if they do it's a paparazzi shot taken without their knowledge or permission.

It all reinforces the image that our financial institutions are run by crooks.

I've often wondered if it carries the weight we think it does over there. What if people are bowing all the time when a mistake happens? Does it seem as hollow as "I'm sorry" does in the States?

I don't feel "I'm sorry" is hollow at all. "We are sorry" seems hollow. Perhaps I don't read enough papers, but do people in power often say "I'm sorry"?

People taking responsibility, in a legitimate / sincere way, is such a healing thing on its own. It is true, the problem today is we get fucked over by big corporations so often that most of us have a big hate built up, and then start to become indifferent and/or angry and/or start distrusting everything more in general, and other negative behavour cycles that come from it. This stress has a very real negative health impact as well.

As a reference for anyone reading, South Korea has a population of a bit less than 50 million. 20 million credit card details stolen means that just under half of the country's population was affected..

There is something to be said about the drawbacks of living in such a small but highly networked society (esp. in S. Korea where the entire country has a particular 'small town' feel) but I do not have the energy to organize and put my thoughts to keyboard at the moment.

I'd say nearly all the population is affected since a good portion of their population will be kids with no credit card or elderly from a generation when credit cards were not widely used.

Do other countries have the same kind of consumer protection that the western world has in these cases?

Or are these regulations country-by-country?

the US protections were created by the Fair Credit Billing Act in 1975.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Credit_Billing_Act

It would be interesting to hear what sort of protection Visa/etc offers in other countries.

Not sure about that, but it seems like people will be protected. "In a statement the Financial Services Commission, Korea's national financial regulator, said: "The credit card firms will cover any financial losses caused to their customers due to the latest accident."

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