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Coupang’s headquarters in Seoul. (Ryu Woo-jong/Hankyoreh)

Korean police investigating the leak of customers’ personal information at Coupang, the country’s leading online retailer, said the data breach affected more than 30 million user accounts. In effect, the police plan to apply criminal charges to the leak of all 30 million accounts, and not just the 3,000 accounts mentioned in the findings of Coupang’s internal probe.

“We’ve nearly wrapped up our investigation into the leak of personal information [at Coupang]. While we haven’t officially closed the investigation, [information was leaked] from around 30 million accounts,” said Park Jeong-bo, the chief of the Seoul Metropolitan Police, in a press briefing on Monday.

That implies that the leak affected the majority of Coupang users. The police believe the leak covered a range of personal information from the compromised accounts, including names, delivery addresses and email addresses.

There is a huge gap between the police statement and the findings of Coupang’s internal investigation, which concluded that information had only been leaked from 3,000 accounts.

Coupang’s claim about the number of accounts was based on the personal information actually saved on the computer of the former Chinese employee, who has been named as a suspect in the case. But the police believe the criminal charges at Coupang should also cover information leaked on cloud servers.

When asked whether the police think that Coupang made a false claim, Park said, “That’s what we think. We’ll have to look into whether they intended to downplay this.”

The remaining task for the 86-person task force that’s conducting the police investigation under Choi Jong-sang is to question the suspect.

“The scale of the leak has been determined, and what’s left is interrogating the suspect. Since the suspect is a foreign national, we can’t just call them in. But we’re working through various channels to extradite the suspect for questioning,” Park said.

In addition to the leak of personal information, the police are investigating Coupang over its release of the internal probe findings and over the death of a young logistics center employee named Jang Deok-jun, who is suspected to have died from overwork. 

In connection with Coupang’s unilateral release of its internal probe findings, interim Coupang CEO Harold Rogers has left the country, apparently to avoid being questioned by the police about alleged evidence tampering.

“The police have notified Rogers three times that he must appear for questioning,” Park said, adding that if Rogers refuses to appear, the police would take the appropriate measures — which might include requesting an arrest warrant.

By Bang Jun-ho, staff reporter

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