Coupang Massive Personal Data Leak Under Scrutiny... National Assembly to Hold Emergency Inquiry

Science and Policy Committees to Hold Consecutive Inquiries on December 2-3
Probing Circumstances and Accountability in Coupang Data Leak

The National Assembly will conduct an emergency inquiry on December 2 regarding Coupang, which experienced a leak of 33.7 million customer personal information records. The plan is to question Coupang CEO Park Daejun and relevant agencies to determine the circumstances of the leak and assign responsibility.

A massive personal information leak incident involving over 30 million cases occurred at Coupang. This scale surpasses the economically active population of 29.69 million and is the worst leak incident in history. Photo by Dongju Yoon, Coupang headquarters on December 1, 2025.

According to the National Assembly on December 1, the Science, ICT, Broadcasting, and Communications Committee will hold a plenary session on December 2 to conduct an inquiry into the massive Coupang personal information leak. Officials from relevant agencies, including the Ministry of Science and ICT and the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA), are expected to attend.

The committee is also expected to question CEO Park and Coupang's information security officers about the circumstances of the leak. This customer information leak far exceeds the recent SK Telecom personal information leak incident, which affected approximately 23.24 million people.

The National Policy Committee of the National Assembly also plans to hold a plenary session on December 3 in the afternoon, summoning officials from relevant agencies and Coupang to conduct an inquiry into the incident. Officials from the Financial Services Commission, the Financial Supervisory Service, the Personal Information Protection Commission, the Office for Government Policy Coordination, and the Fair Trade Commission are expected to attend.

There is growing debate over the responsibility of Coupang's de facto owner, Coupang Inc. Chairman Bom Kim, but it remains uncertain whether he will appear before the National Assembly. Chairman Kim was requested to attend the National Assembly several times due to controversies related to Coupang, but he did not attend the parliamentary audits on November 14 and 28, citing overseas travel.

Given that the Coupang personal information leak is 1.5 times larger than the SK Telecom subscriber USIM information hacking incident, there is a possibility that an unprecedented fine will be imposed. According to the Personal Information Protection Act, up to 3% of a company’s revenue can be levied as a fine for violations. Coupang’s consolidated revenue last year amounted to 38.2988 trillion won.