Shinhan Card says it has alerted the Personal Information Protection Commission(PIPC) after it determined that some 190-thousand pieces of information on merchants affiliated with the firm was leaked.

The nation's number one credit card company said Tuesday that the leaked information included the names, date of birth and mobile phone numbers of merchants. 

However, the firm said its internal investigation found that no resident registration numbers, credit card numbers or bank account numbers had been breached. 

The company added that the leak did not involve ordinary cardholders and dismissed the possibility of the leaked information spreading elsewhere given that the breach resulted from employee deviance and not from an outside attack, such as hacking. 

The company said the information was leaked in a bid by the employee to secure new credit card customers.