The news
Samsung Electronics said on September 28, 2026, that it was the sole vendor for the Hana Financial private 5G network, a smart office built with SK Telecom across 16 floors of Hana Financial Group's new Incheon headquarters, which Samsung called Korea's first in finance.
Samsung said it supplied radios, baseband equipment and a cloud-native core, running on the mid-band 4.7GHz spectrum dedicated to private 5G networks in Korea. According to The Korea Herald, Hana Financial TI, the group's information technology services arm, built the network using dedicated frequencies and numbers allocated by the Ministry of Science and ICT, with SK Telecom providing network design and technical support.
The network supports flexible workspaces for about 3,000 employees at the Cheongna headquarters, and employees from 10 affiliates began moving into the building in September, The Korea Herald reported. Samsung said staff using 5G-enabled devices can work anywhere in the building and that the setup supports more efficient use of office space.
Security was the main design constraint. Samsung said the network stacks several layers of protection: stronger encryption, a firewall and defenses against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Access is tied to the USIM, the subscriber identity module inside each device, so only approved devices and registered users can get on. The Korea Herald reported that the business network is separated from external networks.
Samsung's 5G Standalone Core also lets the group carve its single physical network into several virtual ones, a technique known as network slicing. According to Samsung, each Hana Financial Group subsidiary runs on slices of its own, so it can operate separately under its own security policies and business requirements.
Samsung said strict network-separation requirements have left Wi-Fi largely off-limits for financial institutions. Kim Goo-Young, head of SK Telecom's Enterprise Business Office, said employees need a network that gives them "secure, reliable access to internal systems" from anywhere. Park Geun-young, CEO of Hana Financial TI, said the office lets staff collaborate without being tied to one place while complying with financial security regulations, according to The Korea Herald.
The numbers
- Floors covered at the headquarters
- 16
- Employees supported (per The Korea Herald)
- About 3,000
- Affiliates moving into the building (per The Korea Herald)
- 10
- Private 5G spectrum band
- 4.7GHz (mid-band)
Why CEOs should care
For CIOs at banks, insurers and other regulated firms, this is a reference case for bringing wireless into offices where rules on separating internal networks have kept Wi-Fi out. Before copying it, ask whether your regulator accepts a private cellular network as meeting its segregation rules, which of your laptops and phones support 5G, and who will run the core network day to day. Hana had its own IT subsidiary build the network, with SK Telecom on design and technical support.
For CFOs and real estate leaders, the stated benefits are flexible seating across 16 floors and 10 affiliates and more efficient use of office space, not headline speeds. None of the companies disclosed costs, so buyers weighing private 5G against Wi-Fi and wired networks should request total cost of ownership over the equipment's life, including devices, SIM management and support contracts, and compare it with the office space savings they expect.
For CISOs, network slicing offers a way for a group of companies to share one physical network while keeping separate security policies for each unit. SIM-based authentication ties access to a physical credential rather than a password. Ask vendors how slices are isolated from one another, how SIMs are issued and revoked when staff leave, and how the core network itself is monitored and patched.
The bigger picture
Korea has set aside 4.7GHz spectrum for private 5G, and Hana Financial TI used dedicated frequencies and numbers from the Ministry of Science and ICT to build its own network rather than buy capacity on a public mobile network. Samsung said it has deployed private 5G across manufacturing, finance, construction and IT, and presented this project as evidence that the technology can meet the security demands of regulated industries. The headquarters completes Hana Financial Town, which also includes an integrated data center opened in 2017 and Hana Global Campus from 2019, according to The Korea Herald.
What’s next
Watch whether other Korean financial groups follow Hana's lead, whether Samsung and SK Telecom publish performance or cost data from the building, and how the group uses the network for the enterprise AI projects Samsung says it is meant to support.
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