South Korea Police Raid E-Commerce Giant Coupang Over Data Leak

South Korean police on Tuesday raided the headquarters of e-commerce giant Coupang over a recent data leak believed to have affected more than 33 million customers.

Coupang is South Korea’s most popular online shopping platform, serving millions of customers with lightning-fast deliveries of products from groceries to gadgets.

But the company suffered a massive data leak this year, telling customers that their names, email addresses, phone numbers, shipping addresses, and some order histories had been exposed.

Payment details and login credentials were not affected.

Coupang told authorities the personal information of 33.7 million customers had been leaked — almost two-thirds of the population of the country.

On Tuesday, police said they were “conducting a search and seizure operation at Coupang’s headquarters”, describing it as a “necessary measure to accurately understand the incident”.

Seventeen officers from the Seoul metropolitan police’s cyber investigation unit were deployed, with law enforcement vowing to “comprehensively investigate” based on the evidence obtained.

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Last week, President Lee Jae Myung called for swift action to penalise those responsible for the debacle.

Seoul has said the leak took place through Coupang’s overseas servers from June 24 to November 8.

But the company only became aware of it last month, according to police and local media, who said the company had issued a complaint in November against the alleged culprit — a former employee who is a Chinese national.

The case follows a major breach at South Korea’s largest mobile carrier SK Telecom, which was fined 134 billion won ($91 million) in August after a cyberattack exposed data on nearly 27 million users.

AFP