Jun 12, 2026 · 21 min · 8 segments
This week, John and Joon Ha examine South Korea’s record fines against Coupang over alleged personal data protection violations, including what the penalties could mean for the U.S.-listed e-commerce…
John LeeHost
Joon Ha ParkHost
Jeongmin KimHost
It's a little bit after 3 p.m. And today started off with big economic news, corporate news, really, about this company that many of us order our goods from every day.
But anyways, yeah, so South Korea will be fining the coupon company 625 billion won.
the reason for that fine is, of course, it comes from last year's entire leak of information, clients and customer information and their orders and everything.
the government has been talking about investigations and calling in the Coupang CEO to the National Assembly for grilling.
right? So the PIPC, the Personal Information Protection Commission, they said that the New York listed company will be facing these fines for the reasons that you mentioned.
But of course, there has been a lot of talk, as we mentioned in previous podcasts, where Republican U.S. lawmakers have had a little bit of an issue with South Korea's or the South Korean administration's handling of the coupang issue, seeing that it's not a South Korean company, but a U.S. company in form.
We've not only had Republican lawmakers, we've had the U.S. trade representative, Jameson Greer, He's been hammering South Korea by discriminating against what you just described as a New York listed company.
It's also going to be, as you just pointed out, Republican lawmakers, the Trump administration officials.
It's the largest ever fine that's recorded in, ever imposed by the regulator on a single company.
And they also have levied an additional 201.1 billion won fine for the unauthorized collection of records of online user activities and other violations.
It's a little bit after 3 p.m. And today started off with big economic news, corporate news, really, about this company that many of us order our goods from every day.
But anyways, yeah, so South Korea will be fining the coupon company 625 billion won.
the reason for that fine is, of course, it comes from last year's entire leak of information, clients and customer information and their orders and everything.
the government has been talking about investigations and calling in the Coupang CEO to the National Assembly for grilling.
right? So the PIPC, the Personal Information Protection Commission, they said that the New York listed company will be facing these fines for the reasons that you mentioned.
But of course, there has been a lot of talk, as we mentioned in previous podcasts, where Republican U.S. lawmakers have had a little bit of an issue with South Korea's or the South Korean administration's handling of the coupang issue, seeing that it's not a South Korean company, but a U.S. company in form.
We've not only had Republican lawmakers, we've had the U.S. trade representative, Jameson Greer, He's been hammering South Korea by discriminating against what you just described as a New York listed company.
It's also going to be, as you just pointed out, Republican lawmakers, the Trump administration officials.
It's the largest ever fine that's recorded in, ever imposed by the regulator on a single company.
And they also have levied an additional 201.1 billion won fine for the unauthorized collection of records of online user activities and other violations.
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