Coupang’s lies, even in the US lawsuit, saying “there was no cover-up of industrial accidents”

[Special Feature] Silence in Korea, denial in the US... Two faces over industrial accidents and personal information leaks

If you criticize something, they say it's not true. After some time, new evidence emerges and the explanation is revealed to be false.

Coupang, which has been embroiled in controversy over the concealment of worker deaths and industrial accidents and personal information leaks, is repeating this process several times. In particular, Coupang is making claims that are different from the facts when asserting Korean cases in U.S. lawsuits or government agencies, or in explaining the U.S. situation in Korea. It is pointed out that Coupang, which makes 90% of its sales in Korea but is headquartered in the United States, is avoiding responsibility by exploiting the information gap between Korea and the United States.

Coupang: “Kim Beom-seok never tried to cover up industrial accidents”

As a result of Hankyoreh 21's review of shareholders' lawsuit documents against Coupang filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, it was found that Coupang claimed that "there was no concealment of industrial accidents" in response to shareholders' criticism that it intentionally concealed industrial accidents in 2023. The lawsuit was filed in August 2022 by Coupang shareholders, including New York City public employee pensions, against Coupang and Kim Beom-seok, chairman of the board of directors of Coupang Inc., saying, “We have suffered damages due to the stock price decline due to false disclosures.” It also contains information that Coupang, Chairman Kim, etc. held an initial public offering (IPO) while hiding the negative aspects of the company from shareholders during the listing process on March 11, 2021. Coupang's stock price rose to a peak of about $69 in March 2021, immediately after the initial public offering, and then fell to the $20 range in 2022.

Shareholders claim that they suffered damages, especially after the listing, when deaths from overwork and algorithm manipulation were reported. This means that Coupang concealed the poor working conditions in which workers died from overwork and deceived shareholders by claiming that it was a ‘safe and good workplace.’ In addition, shareholders pointed out that Coupang had reduced or omitted regulatory risks such as anti-competitive and unfair practices such as price control on stores, forced advertising, and manipulation of search algorithms and reviews.

In November 2023, as the lawsuit continued, Coupang submitted a defense statement regarding this claim to the court. This is a vehement denial of the concealment of industrial accidents. Looking at the content, Coupang argued in relation to poor labor issues, “Chairman Kim’s acknowledgment of Coupang’s past (labor site) safety problems does not suggest that he was trying to conceal something (related to industrial accidents), nor does it mean that he is aware of the current (labor safety) problems.”

Beomseok Kim says, “Never leave a note saying you worked hard.”

This is a claim that directly contradicts Coupang’s recently controversial ‘Document on Response to Concealment of Industrial Accidents.’ Coupang’s ‘Crisis Management Response Guidelines’ obtained by the Hankyoreh, Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC), and Newstapa’s joint reporting team contain an intention to conceal the death from overwork. The document states, “We will make the bereaved family on our side. We will block contaminated information (to the bereaved family).” It also contains information to prevent the expansion of investigations by the Ministry of Employment and Labor and the police. This guideline was created in January 2021, and the last revision date was March 2023.

It was also revealed in a Hankyoreh report that in October 2020, Chairman Kim (CEO of Coupang at the time) ordered an executive at the time to edit the CCTV footage of Mr. Jang Deok-jun, who died while working at a logistics center, to the company's advantage. Chairman Kim also left a text message saying, "Never leave a note saying that he (Jang Deok-jun) worked hard. Why is he a hard worker? That doesn't make sense. They are hourly workers." This means that Chairman Kim has been aware of Coupang’s poor labor conditions since at least October 2020.

There are also traces of false information contained in the defense statement. Coupang claimed, “We were only able to identify one death among Coupang’s 50,000 employees during the period when shareholders claimed damages.” The purpose is to deny claims of poor working conditions and emphasize that the number of deaths is extremely low. The period that Coupang refers to is March 11, 2021, to July 14, 2022, which corresponds to the time from Coupang's listing to the time the stock price plummeted.

This also wasn't true. According to the statistics of the National Logistics Center Branch of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions and the Public Transport Workers' Union and media reports, there were at least two confirmed deaths during this period. On March 24, 2021, a Coupang delivery worker in his 40s died in Gyesan-dong, Incheon. On December 24, 2021, a worker in his 50s working at Coupang's Dongtan Logistics Center collapsed from cerebral hemorrhage and died on February 11, 2022.

Nevertheless, Judge Vernon Broderick of the Southern District of New York, who was in charge of the first trial, ruled in favor of Coupang in September 2025. The purpose is that it has not been proven that Coupang and its management intentionally tried to deceive shareholders. The court ruled that Coupang's working conditions, overwork and death of workers, etc. were already known through existing reports and were not materially false. Additionally, Coupang's claims about the algorithm were dismissed on the grounds that there was no specific basis. This lawsuit is currently in its second trial due to an appeal from shareholders.

No problem in the US? There are cases of large fines

Coupang's official position regarding the recent personal information leak incident was also pointed out to be different from the facts. The statement in question came at a hearing on the Coupang personal information leak incident held at the National Assembly on December 17, 2025. Regarding this situation, Coupang interim CEO Harold Rogers, who attended the hearing, said, "Under U.S. law, there was no obligation to submit a report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In fact, this type of data leak in the U.S. does not violate the Personal Information Protection Act."

Experts pointed out that this claim is far from the truth. The leak of 37 million people's personal information is highly likely to be a violation of personal information-related laws in the United States as well. Dong-hoo Son, a New York attorney who handled the Coupang personal information leak case at SJKP, an American law firm that is a local subsidiary of Korean law firm Daeryun, said, "The leaked information is very close-related. Just because financial information was not leaked does not mean it is not a violation of the law. Personal information protection is stipulated in various laws, including the Federal Personal Information Protection Act and the Consumer Protection Act. There are many ways to say that this situation is a violation of the law."

There are also cases where large fines were imposed due to failure to protect personal information. A representative example is the Cambridge Analytica incident. This refers to the inappropriate use of Facebook user information on a large scale by a British consulting company during the 2016 US presidential election without user consent. The number of victims reached 87 million, and Facebook's information security failures came to the fore. After an investigation in 2019, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) imposed a fine of $5 billion (approximately 7.28 trillion won) on Facebook, citing violations of user privacy.

The fact that CEO Rogers said there was no obligation to disclose is also something that needs explanation. Brian Finch, an attorney at Pillsbury Law Firm, said, “The most important criterion in determining disclosure obligations is whether an incident constitutes ‘information important to shareholders.’” He added, “Not all cybersecurity incidents automatically give rise to disclosure obligations, but companies must be able to reasonably explain their judgments whether or not they make disclosures.”

‘Talpang’ continues, “There is no disruption in business”

What Coupang reported to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission also became a source of controversy. Coupang submitted the ‘8-K’ report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on December 17, two weeks after the personal information leak was officially announced on November 29, 2025. This is a regular report that U.S. listed companies must submit ‘within 4 business days’ regarding important events or changes.

The late reporting was also a problem, but in this report, Coupang wrote that there was a “serious security incident” but that “there were no disruptions to sales.” However, criticism has been raised that this sentence also reflects the situation in Korea in a reduced manner. This is because users’ departure from Coupang, or ‘departure,’ is also revealed in numbers. According to the big data platform Mobile Index, the number of daily active users of Coupang as of December 20 was 14,843,787, the lowest in about two months since October 5 (14.46 million). The volume of card payments also decreased. As a result of the People Power Party lawmaker Cho Seung-hwan's office analyzing Coupang payment usage data from six card companies (KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Woori, Hana, Samsung, and Hyundai), the number of payment approvals from Coupang for the two weeks from November 30 to December 13 after Coupang's personal information leak became known was 44,954,173. This is a decrease of 1,882,948 cases, or approximately 4.1%, from the 46,837,121 cases in the two weeks immediately before the announcement of the leak (November 16-29).

For this reason, an additional lawsuit was filed in the United States, claiming that Coupang deceived shareholders regarding the leak of personal information. On December 18, 2025, Coupang shareholders filed a lawsuit in the federal court in the Northern District of California claiming responsibility for damages against Coupang, Chairman Kim, and others for “the decline in stock price due to false disclosure.” The purpose is that even though Coupang announced that there was no security problem before the personal information leak incident, a major flaw was discovered. In addition, the main reason for the lawsuit was that Coupang recognized a large-scale personal information leak on November 18, 2025, but failed to comply with mandatory disclosure within 4 business days.

Kang Jang-mook, a professor at Dongguk University's Graduate School of International Information Security (Artificial Intelligence Security), said, "Coupang only thought about excessive use of customer information for artificial intelligence services, and information protection had the vulnerability of being an outdated system. (After the incident), its attitude also showed an outdated appearance. In order to provide trust in a technology-driven society, companies that collect customer information and achieve results through artificial intelligence must also take a thorough approach to security."

Coupang did not reveal its position despite repeated inquiries from Hankyoreh 21 regarding the claims made during the U.S. trial and Representative Rogers' remarks at the hearing.

Reporter Park Jun-yong juneyong@hani.co.kr

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Coupang's lies in the U.S. lawsuit, saying "there was no cover-up of industrial accidents" (link)