South Korea Defends Record $422 Million Coupang Fine as US Alleges Protectionism

South Korea’s decision to fine American-owned eCommerce firm Coupang is straining relations between the two countries, Reuters reported Friday (July 20).

South Korea said the fine was imposed over a data leak, but American lawmakers said the move raises questions about whether the country is treating U.S. companies fairly, according to the report.

The fine of 625 billion won (about $422 million) followed Coupang’s November 2025 data leak, per the report.

The dispute over the fine has become serious enough that South Korea’s ambassador to the U.S. returned to Seoul to discuss it with officials in President Lee Jae Myung’s administration, the report said.

The ambassador, Kang Kyung-wha, told local media, per the report: “The issue is dragging on much longer than I expected.”

A lawmaker who is a member of South Korea’s ruling Democratic Party, Park Sun-won, said in the report that the fine imposed on Coupang was for the data leak and that the fine “would be the same for any company.”

A U.S. State Department spokesperson said in the report that South Korea “should not impose disproportionate burdens on U.S. companies.”

Coupang told Reuters that the company hopes to find a constructive resolution.

It was reported in November 2025 that Coupang is considered the “Amazon of South Korea” and that the data breach exposed personal information of the company’s entire customer base. The exposed data was limited to customers’ names, email addresses, phone numbers, shipping addresses and some order histories.

In December 2025, it was reported that an investor class action lawsuit filed in California alleged that Coupang violated securities laws after the data breach by misleading investors about its data security practices and failing to disclose the breach in a timely manner.

Coupang announced in December 2025 that the perpetrator of the data breach, a former Coupang employees, retained data from only 3,000 accounts, did not transfer the data to others, and later deleted the data when news outlets began reporting the incident.

Days later, on Dec. 29, Coupang issued an apology from the company’s interim CEO and said it would begin offering vouchers worth up to 55,000 won ($38) to each of the 33.7 million customers affected by the cybersecurity incident.

In January, it was reported that two Coupang investors called on the U.S. government to investigate South Korea’s handling of the incident and said the U.S. could also impose trade remedies in response to what they said was discriminatory treatment of Coupang.

When South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission levied the roughly $412 million fine on Coupang in June, it was reported that the fine was the largest ever imposed for a privacy violation in South Korea.