Coast Guard Chief and Senior Officials Illegally Accessed Emails... Coast Guard Employee Legally Detained

A former Coast Guard employee was sentenced to prison for secretly accessing the internet messenger accounts of the Commissioner of the Korea Coast Guard and other senior officials hundreds of times to read their emails.

On the 14th, Judge An Heegil of the Incheon District Court Criminal Division 4 sentenced A (36, then a lieutenant), a former Coast Guard employee indicted for violating the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection, to 1 year and 6 months in prison and ordered his immediate detention in court.

A was indicted without detention on charges of secretly accessing the internet messenger accounts of 51 Coast Guard executives and employees, including Commissioner Kim Honghee, 951 times from February 23 to November 2, 2021, and reading the contents of their emails.

It was revealed that he exploited the fact that many employees used the same initial default passwords to unlawfully access the messenger accounts. He accessed the email of the Coast Guard Inspection Division Chief more than 300 times without authorization, and investigations showed 14 unauthorized accesses to the Commissioner’s account, 133 to the Investigation Bureau Chief, 113 to the Audit Officer, and 40 to the Personnel Officer.

The court stated, "The defendant’s crime period was long and the number of offenses was large, and he even formatted the computer used in the crime, so the culpability is not light," but also explained the mitigating factors, "considering that the defendant admitted to the crime and that a significant number of the victimized public officials do not wish for punishment."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.