Seoul, June 11, 2026
South Korea’s data protection regulator on Thursday fined e-commerce company Coupang a record 624.7 billion won ($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 in fine for the unauthorised collection of records of online user activities and other violations.
It marked the regulator’s highest fine ever against a company for a single data breach and multiple violations, reports Yonhap news agency.
“Coupang is a company that grew dramatically by offering an innovative e-commerce service based on large-scale customer information,” Song Kyung-hee, the watchdog’s chief, said in a briefing. “But our investigation confirmed that it did not have a system to protect and manage personal information commensurate to that.”
The punitive measures came more than six months after Coupang 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 about 37.5 million users had been affected in the breach — about 33.2 million members and 4.3 million users who were not members.
The penalty for the breach more than tripled the regulator’s previous record fine of 134.8 billion won against wireless carrier SK Telecom Co. last August over a major data leak.
The regulator also found that Coupang collected records of online activities of 11.17 million users, who accessed other services, without their permission. The records included websites and applications visited by the users.
It additionally determined that the company did not properly manage advertisement partners that posted “hi-jacking” advertisements.
Separately, the watchdog also fined the company’s logistics arm, Coupang Fulfillment Services, 248 million won for various privacy violations, such as collecting a list of journalists and keeping them on an employment restriction list.(Agency)
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