Five Major Banks See KRW 44.9 Billion in Loan-Related Financial Incidents Within Six Months... KRW 40.6 Billion at KB Kookmin Bank Alone

134 cases from 2022 through July 2026
124 cases at KB Kookmin Bank alone
Employees overlooked false loan documents and even falsified paperwork themselves

At the five major commercial banks (KB Kookmin Bank, Shinhan Bank, Hana Bank, Woori Bank and NH NongHyup Bank), 134 financial accidents involving loans occurred within six months of loan origination over the past five years and seven months, involving a total of KRW 44.925 billion. More than 90% of both the number of incidents and the total amount across the five banks were attributed to KB Kookmin Bank.

Some cases involved employees falsifying income documents to boost loan performance or approving loans despite knowing that contracts were false, prompting calls to review performance evaluations and internal control systems.

According to data submitted by the five major commercial banks to the office of Kim Hyungyeon, a lawmaker from the Rebuilding Korea Party and a member of the National Assembly’s Political Affairs Committee, a total of 134 ultra-short-term loan accidents occurred from 2022 through July this year, involving financial accidents within six months of a loan being issued or its maturity being extended.

KB Kookmin Bank accounted for 124 cases, or 92.5% of all incidents. Hana Bank had five cases, Shinhan Bank four and Woori Bank one.

By loan type, corporate loans accounted for 89 cases, or 65.9% of the total. Of these, 63 involved newly issued loans, while 26 involved extensions of existing loans.

Personal loans accounted for 45 cases, of which 33 were real estate-related loans, such as mortgage loans and jeonse loans.

The total amount of loans linked to the incidents across the five banks was KRW 44.925 billion. By bank, the figures were KRW 40.638 billion (90.5%) for KB Kookmin Bank, KRW 2.486 billion (5.5%) for Hana Bank, KRW 1.467 billion (3.3%) for Shinhan Bank and KRW 334 million (0.7%) for Woori Bank.

By period, 12 incidents occurred within one month of a loan being issued or its maturity extended, 54 occurred more than one month but within three months later, and 68 occurred more than three months but within six months later.

Details of the incidents submitted to the lawmaker’s office by KB Kookmin Bank, where financial accidents were concentrated, showed multiple cases in which employees reviewed loan applications based on income documents they knew had been forged or altered, or issued loans despite knowing that contracts were false.

Using these methods, loans totaling KRW 6.877 billion in corporate loans and KRW 7.088 billion in household loans were issued across 52 accounts.

There were also cases in which loans were issued based on false sale contracts despite employees knowing that commercial units had remained unsold for a long time and were being offered at discounted prices, or loans were disbursed even though employees could have known that lease agreements were false. Using these methods, corporate loans totaling KRW 12.298 billion were issued across 27 accounts.

Some employees also removed from business registration certificates submitted by borrowers industry categories that were ineligible for the Bank of Korea’s Financial Intermediary Support Loan program, then issued new loans or extended existing ones in order to retain business clients. These cases involved 36 accounts and totaled KRW 11.776 billion.

Other cases included issuing loans despite knowing that a developer was attempting to make false sales of commercial units to an affiliated company to secure funding, and improperly issuing jeonse loans using altered resident registration records.

As measures to prevent recurrence, KB Kookmin Bank proposed automatically collecting income documents through Public MyData, strengthening document authenticity checks, and conducting preliminary reviews before disbursing corporate loans.

Assemblyman Kim said, "If employees falsified documents to boost their performance or issued loans despite knowing that contracts were false, simply improving the document verification system is not enough. We need to determine whether performance evaluations and compensation practices encouraged excessive lending, why screening and internal controls failed to catch these cases, and establish effective measures to prevent employees from deliberately participating in such misconduct."

Kim Hyungyeon, Rebuilding Korea Party lawmaker

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