A person enters LG Uplus headquarters in Yongsan-gu, Seoul. (Yonhap) LG Uplus said Tuesday it has acquired Pago Networks, a domestic specialist in managed detection and response services, in what the carrier called its first merger under a broader push to make security a growth business.MDR firms monitor a client's systems around the clock and act on threats as they surface, rather than just flagging them. The companies did not disclose the price, the stake or whether Pago becomes a consolidated subsidiary, citing confidentiality terms.LG Uplus is South Korea's third-largest mobile carrier by handset subscribers, behind SK Telecom and KT. Under CEO Hong Beom-sik, who took the helm in late 2024, it has trimmed noncore ventures and shifted investment toward artificial intelligence, data centers and security.The deal serves a dual purpose. LG Uplus plans to fold Pago's threat detection and response teams into its own defenses while using the same capability to sell to corporate clients, pairing MDR with its existing security monitoring, quantum-resistant authentication service AlphaKey and cloud-based U+SASE.That internal motive carries weight given recent history. LG Uplus was fined 6.8 billion won ($4.8 million) by the Personal Information Protection Commission in 2023 after the data of roughly 297,000 customers was exposed.The pressure on Korean carriers has since intensified. SK Telecom disclosed a breach in 2025 affecting subscriber records, drew a fine of about 134 billion won and pledged 700 billion won in security spending over five years.Owning an MDR operator, rather than outsourcing monitoring, lets a carrier keep threat data in-house and feed it into its own detection systems.Founded in 2017, Pago runs on a self-developed platform called DeepACT and, by its own account, serves finance, manufacturing and IT clients while expanding into seven Southeast Asian markets including Malaysia and the Philippines.The acquisition puts substance behind the "Secure AI" strategy LG Uplus outlined ahead of MWC 2026."This acquisition is a decision to offer corporate customers more complete security services while raising our own response capabilities a notch," said Kwon Yong-hyun, head of the enterprise business unit, adding that the company aims to establish itself as a security partner clients can trust.