Appeared at the National Assembly Coupang Hearing on December 30
"No Instructions Were Given to Coupang by the Ministry of Science and ICT"
"3,000 Cases Confirmed from the Suspect's Laptop"
On December 30, Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Science and ICT Bae Kyunghoon reaffirmed that the scope of Coupang's personal information leak exceeded 33 million cases. He also made it clear that the Ministry of Science and ICT had not issued any instructions regarding Coupang's internal investigation.
At the National Assembly hearing held that day to investigate the Coupang breach incident, personal information leakage, unfair trade, labor environment conditions, and to establish measures to prevent recurrence, Vice Prime Minister Bae directly refuted Coupang's claims.
Vice Prime Minister Bae explained the recent leak, stating, "The suspect accessed Coupang's servers using a signed authentication key, freely checked and monitored more than 33 million customers' information, and downloaded the necessary data."
Previously, Coupang had announced that its own investigation into the former employee accused of leaking information confirmed only 3,000 accounts, and that the rest had been deleted. In response, Vice Prime Minister Bae said, "I cannot agree with that," adding, "More than 33 million names and email addresses were leaked, and this fact was confirmed by the Personal Information Protection Commission, the National Police Agency, and a joint public-private investigation team."
He further stated, "Additionally, I believe that delivery addresses and order details were also leaked," and expressed "serious concern that Coupang announced results that had not been agreed upon in advance."
In response to a question from Kim Youngbae, a lawmaker from the Democratic Party of Korea, who asked, "Coupang reported that only 3,000 accounts were leaked through cooperation based on direct instructions from the Korean government. Isn't this a false report?" Vice Prime Minister Bae replied, "There were no government instructions."
Regarding Coupang's claim about the scale of the leak based on its own investigation, he explained, "The figure of 3,000 refers to two storage devices from the suspect's laptop and computer, and two SSDs, totaling four devices," and added, "The 3,000 leaked cases refer to the information confirmed after seizing the laptop."
At the hearing, the possibility was raised that the suspect could have used other methods, such as cloud storage, in addition to hardware storage devices, to store personal information. There were also claims that additional accomplices might be involved beyond the identified suspect.
On the 30th, at the National Assembly hearing held to investigate the Coupang breach incident, personal information leakage, unfair trade, labor environment conditions, and to prepare measures to prevent recurrence, Harold Rogers, CEO of Coupang, responded to lawmakers' questions. Photo by Yonhap News
Vice Prime Minister Bae stated, "In reality, the suspect illicitly possessed the signing key and, by generating key tokens, was able to access and confirm virtually all customer information, totaling more than 33 million records. That is extremely significant."
He continued, "Customer information, including names and email addresses, was exposed. We are currently analyzing the situation, but it appears that delivery information and delivery history were also leaked."
Regarding Coupang's claim that the investigation was conducted under the direction of the Korean government, Vice Prime Minister Bae said, "The Ministry of Science and ICT is the competent authority for platform companies. The Ministry can make requests and issue directives, but it has not given any instructions in this case." He also commented that Coupang's announcement of its internal investigation results on December 25 "appears to have been made with malicious intent."
He added, "The involvement of the National Intelligence Service (NIS) arose because of concerns over loss during the transfer of the mentioned laptop, desktop, and SSDs, as well as worries about potential international manipulation of the incident. I understand that the NIS assisted in the transfer process." He emphasized, "The NIS does not have the authority to issue instructions to Coupang."
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