South Korea's Science and ICT Minister Bae Kyung-hoon visited KT's (KRX:030200) Gwanghwamun branch on Thursday to inspect the telecommunication giant's response to a recent unauthorized small-payment breach and called for stringent measures to prevent such occurrences in the future.

Bae told KT to fully cooperate with a joint public-private investigation into what led to the incident and urged the company to exclude affected customers from billing charges, according to a Science Ministry release the same day.

Shares of KT rose nearly 1% in recent trade.