South Korea Fines Coupang $410 Million for Data Breach, Privacy Violations

SEOUL, June 11 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's data protection regulator on Thursday fined e-commerce platform Coupang a combined 624.7 billion won (US$410 million) over a massive data breach and collection of online user activities without permission.

The Personal Information Protection Commission levied a fine of 423.58 billion won for the data breach that affected more than 37 million users, marking the largest-ever penalty imposed for a single data leak.

It also fined Coupang 201.16 billion won for the unauthorized collection of online user activities.

The punitive measures came more than six months after Coupang reported a large-scale data breach last November of personal information of South Korean users, including their names, phone numbers and delivery details.

For the data breach, the penalty for Coupang far surpassed 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 authorization. The records included websites and applications visited by the users.

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.