South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on Tuesday ordered a comprehensive review to establish a government-wide cybersecurity command capable of coordinating defenses against increasingly sophisticated, AI-powered cyberattacks. Speaking at a Cabinet meeting at Cheong Wa Dae, President Lee emphasized that cyber threats now pose severe risks to daily life, national security, and the economy. He urged officials to consider creating a powerful “cybersecurity czar” body to unify oversight, which is currently fragmented across the National Intelligence Service, the Ministry of Science and ICT, and the Financial Services Commission, The Korea Times reported.
The presidential directive follows a series of recent high-profile breaches in the financial sector, including a massive cyberattack on cryptocurrency exchange Binance. Lee noted that rapid advances in artificial intelligence are rendering reactive defense strategies and routine inspections obsolete. He stressed the necessity of early threat detection, immediate information sharing, and proactive defense mechanisms to safeguard critical national infrastructure across energy, finance, and telecommunications.
In tandem with the announcement, South Korean intelligence and security agencies have launched extensive audits. The National Intelligence Service instructed over 2,100 public institutions to perform comprehensive system checks, while separately evaluating internet-connected public infrastructure through mid-November. Concurrently, the science ministry is inspecting roughly 170 major private-sector facilities, with results expected by year-end.
Industry experts welcomed the initiative but stressed that any new entity must possess genuine operational authority rather than existing merely as a advisory panel. Cybersecurity specialists noted that the current ministry-by-ministry approach leads to fragmented responses and superficial self-assessments. They advocated for establishing centralized leadership with control over budgets, personnel, and real-time intelligence sharing, combined with regular, mandatory penetration testing to identify and patch system vulnerabilities before attackers exploit them.
