![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1781292854_84_news-p.v1.20260426.005e39fa4b294251ad5b5821f8d199b1_P1.jpg\"\/ "\\"Coupang")
A Coupang delivery vehicle. Yonhap News<\/p>\nA Coupang delivery vehicle. Yonhap News<\/p>\n
Coupang is expected to take a critical hit to its earnings after receiving an unprecedented fine in the 600 billion won range over a personal data breach. Some argue the penalty is excessive relative to the sensitivity of the leaked information and Coupang’s subsequent measures, calling it inequitable compared with cases involving other companies. Coupang plans to file an administrative lawsuit to contest the fine.<\/p>\n
![\"null](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1781292855_258_news-g.v1.20260611.d0c24d6f43524099a799e26cd90c1939_P1.jpg\"\/ "\\"Coupang")
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According to Coupang on Friday, the company will reflect the fine imposed by the Personal Information Protection Commission in its second-quarter results this year. The amount is nearly equivalent to the 679 billion won record operating profit Coupang posted last year. After recording an operating loss of 354.5 billion won in the first quarter this year due to a customer compensation program following the data breach, Coupang is likely to record another loss in the second quarter.<\/p>\n
“We regret that our preemptive measures to prevent secondary damage related to the data breach, along with explanations based on clear facts, were not sufficiently reflected in the Personal Information Protection Commission’s decision,” Coupang said Friday. The company also announced its intention to file an administrative lawsuit, stating, “We expect the facts to be clarified through legal procedures after receiving the official resolution.”<\/p>\n
Within the industry, the scale of Coupang’s fine is assessed as exceptionally large even by global standards. Meta was fined 380 billion won by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission after the personal information of 533 million people was leaked. Marriott International also faced a total of around 97 billion won in sanctions from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the U.K. Information Commissioner’s Office following a data breach affecting 327 million people. In Korea, SK Telecom was fined 134.8 billion won in connection with a data breach affecting 23.24 million people.<\/p>\n
Behind the multi-hundred-billion-won fine for this hacking incident lies the current fine calculation system, which reflects Coupang’s revenue scale. The fine calculation applied a relevant legal provision allowing a maximum of 3% of average revenue over the three years preceding the incident. The Personal Information Protection Commission determined Coupang’s average revenue during that period to be approximately 36 trillion won.<\/p>\n
This has prompted some to point out problems with the equity of the current fine system. The information leaked from Coupang consisted of general identification data used in providing e-commerce services, such as names, emails, contact numbers, and delivery addresses. Yet other companies that leaked more sensitive information received smaller fines.<\/p>\n
A representative example is matchmaking company Duo, which leaked sensitive personal information of 430,000 people, including assets, religion, marital status, and weight, but received a fine of just 1.2 billion won in April this year. Kakao Pay, which provided the financial and personal information of about 40 million people to Alipay without consent, was fined 6 billion won. This is why critics point out that small and mid-sized companies face penalties of only a few hundred million won even when leaking sensitive information, while large corporations must bear astronomical fines for leaking even general identification data.<\/p>\n
The industry views the Personal Information Protection Commission’s sanction against Coupang as a signal of intensified regulation against e-commerce and platform companies going forward. Tension is rising further within the industry, particularly as a “punitive fine” system set to take effect this September will allow fines of up to 10% of total revenue for large-scale data breaches caused by intent or gross negligence.<\/p>\n
“This can be seen as the government delivering a strong warning message on the issue of personal data protection,” said Lee Jong-woo, a professor of distribution marketing at Namseoul University. “However, since e-commerce and platform companies cannot avoid handling personal information given their business structures, if such large-scale fines are repeated, not many companies will be able to bear them.” He added, “Ultimately, information security investment and management costs across the industry are likely to increase significantly.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Coupang delivery vehicle. Yonhap News Coupang is expected to take a critical hit to its earnings after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51158,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[381],"tags":[28756,426,28798,997,9909,28915,28916],"class_list":["post-51157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-coupang","tag-administrative-lawsuit","tag-coupang","tag-data-breach-fine","tag-e-commerce","tag-personal-information-protection-commission","tag-privacy-regulation","tag-punitive-fine-system"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}