- Coupang breach exposed data of 33.7 million customers, one of South Korea’s largest cyberattacks
- The company offers $35 vouchers as compensation, usable only on Coupang services
- Lawmakers and consumer groups criticize the agreement because marketing and police launch an investigation
In South Korea, people’s personal information is worth about the same as a meal at a restaurant: about $35. Or at least that’s what the latest data breach settlement suggests.
South Korean e-commerce giant Coupang announced it would reach a settlement with 33.7 million customers whose data it lost in a recent cyberattack. In November 2025, an anonymous threat actor broke into Coupang’s IT infrastructure and exfiltrated people’s names, emails, phone numbers, shipping addresses, and specific order information.
The attack is widely considered one of the largest in the country’s history, triggering police investigations and threats of class-action lawsuits.
A “ridiculous” idea
Now, Coupang announced a compensation agreement worth 1.69 trillion won, or approximately $1.18 billion. Under the agreement, each customer will receive a voucher worth 50,000 won, which converts to $34.6 at press time. Interestingly, the vouchers can only be spent on Coupang, which means that after removing the margins, the cost to the company will be even lower.
This further angered some lawmakers in the country. PakGazette reports that Choi Min-hee, a lawmaker from the ruling Democratic Party and chairman of the National Assembly’s Science, ICT, Broadcasting and Communication committee, said in a Facebook post that Coupang was “bundling coupons for services that no one uses.”
He also said that the company is trying to turn a crisis into a business opportunity.
Consumer advocacy group National Council of Consumer Organizations of Korea said Coupang’s plan ridicules victims and downplays the significance of the violation. He described the settlement as a “marketing tool” created to drive more sales, rather than compensate victims.
Less than two weeks after the breach, police sent 17 investigators to conduct a search and seizure at the company’s offices in Songpa-gu. According to local media, “this search and seizure is an essential measure to accurately understand the case” and “to thoroughly investigate the general facts of the case, including the leak of personal information, the route of the leak and the cause.”
Through PakGazette
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