Coupang fined record 624.7 billion won over massive data breach, unauthorized data collection
Coupang fined record 624.7 billion won over massive data breach, unauthorized data collection
Publish Date: 2026-06-11 05:31:00
Source Domain: www.upi.com
South Korean regulators fined e-commerce giant Coupang a record 624.7 billion won (US$410 million) over privacy violations Thursday. This photo, taken Thursday, shows Coupang headquarters in Seoul. Photo by Yonhap
South Korea’s data protection regulator on Thursday fined e-commerce company Coupang Corp. a record 624.7 billion won (US$410 million) over privacy violations, including a massive data breach that affected more than 37 million users.
The Personal Information Protection Commission has decided to impose a record fine of 423.6 billion won for the data breach and levy an additional 201.1 billion-won fine for the unauthorized collection of records of online user activities and other violations.
It marked the largest fine ever imposed by the regulator on a single company, according to the commission.
“The investigation found that this incident happened not by sophisticated hacking, but due to Coupang’s inadequate safety management system,” Song Kyung-hee, the watchdog’s chief, said in a briefing.
Coupang expressed regret over the record fine imposed, adding that it plans to “clarify the facts through legal procedures.”
The punitive measures come more than six months after Coupang belatedly reported a large-scale data breach last November of personal information of users in South Korea, including their names, phone numbers and delivery details.
The regulator concluded that a hacker behind the breach accessed personal information of about 37.5 million users — 33.2 million Coupang members and 4.3 million others, according to Song.
The figure is sharply higher than the 33.67 million accounts earlier determined by a joint private-public probe to have been affected.
The watchdog added that it decided to file a complaint against Coupang for actions that obstructed the investigation.
The penalty for Coupang’s data breach is over three times higher than the regulator’s previous record fine of 134.8 billion won imposed in August 2025 against mobile carrier…
