A local district court ordered SK Communications Co. on Thursday to compensate a user whose information was stolen during a massive hacking incident last year.

The Daegu District Court ruled in favor of Nate and Cyworld user and lawyer Yoo Neung-jong, who launched a lawsuit against SK Communications asking for 3 million won ($2,600).

The court ordered the operator of Nate, the country’s third-most visited Web search engine, and Cyworld, the biggest social networking site with 25 million users, to pay 1 million won in compensation.

This is the first time the court has acknowledged that a company was responsible for the leak, amid numerous hacking incidents in the past. The ruling is expected to pave the way for more lawsuits from the approximately 35 million Nate and Cyworld users affected by the crime.

There have already been some 20 claims against SK Communications, but most trials have been postponed until after the results of the hacking investigation by the nation’s Cyber Terror Response Center.

“This is the first time a company has been found liable for compensation in a hacking scandal,” said Yoo.

“I will gather other victims who have lost their personal information in the hacking scandal and file a class-action lawsuit now that it has been acknowledged that the company is liable,” he said.

Yoo added that he is confident other users will contact him to join in the class-action lawsuit.

However SK Communications still plan to fight the ruling.

“It is regrettable that a court ruling has been made, even though police still investigating the incident and there is not yet sufficient evidence,” said a SK Communications official as quoted in other news reports.

“As soon as we receive the ruling we will review it and consider the possibility of an appeal.”

According to officials, the hacking is thought to have originated in China on July 26, collecting names, phone numbers, emails, passwords and resident registration numbers of roughly 70 percent of the population.

After the SK Communications hacking and similar cyber attacks against a host of Korean online firms, the government implemented a transitional ban against the collection of resident registration numbers. The Korea Communications Commission and the Ministry of Public Administration and Security and the Financial Services Commission will stop the use of the private numbers by 320,000 websites.

The government also said that companies involved in data leakage will face fines of up to 1 percent of their revenue.

Resident registration numbers have widely been used under the current real-name system here not just for administrative purposes but also for financial, medial, welfare and other commercial services.

By Robert Lee (robert@heraldcorp.com)