Lawmakers assailed Coupang’s billionaire founder Bom Kim for failing to appear before a parliamentary hearing on South Korea’s biggest-ever data breach, underscoring rising public anger with the country’s dominant online retailer.
Kim’s absence dominated the special session on Wednesday on the breach, which compromised more than 30 million users’ personal information, including names, phone numbers and delivery details.
The former head of Coupang’s Korean operations, Park Dae-jun, also failed to appear after resigning last week. Harold Rogers, Coupang Inc’s chief administrative officer and newly appointed interim head of the Korean unit, attended the hearing alongside a range of lower-ranking Korean executives.
The crisis has prompted a government probe and disrupted the lives of millions across Korea, with nearly two-thirds of people affected. Rogers said the company is cooperating with the investigation and has handed “thousands of documents” to regulators. It’s also working on a plan to compensate customers affected by the breach, he added.
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But his answers did little to appease lawmakers, with Choi Min-hee, chair of the parliamentary committee for science, ICT and broadcasting, saying Rogers had provided “nothing new” and slamming Kim’s absence as “a failure to respect” parliament and the country as a whole. She warned lawmakers could pass new legislation to ensure top executives could not evade their responsibilities.
The committee adopted a motion to file a complaint against Kim and two other people, including Park, for failing to appear at the hearing.
One lawmaker pressed for a suspension of operations for Coupang, which dominates Korea’s e-commerce landscape thanks in part to its popular early-morning grocery deliveries. The country’s Science and ICT Minister Bae Kyung-hoon said officials would “actively discuss” the halting of Coupang’s business in the country as a possible recourse.
The government said on Thursday that an interagency task force had been formed to respond to the breach, including officials from the Personal Information Protection Committee, the Korea Media Communications Commission and the Financial Services Commission, Yonhap News Agency reported.
READ MORE: Coupang CEO resigns over historic South Korean data breach
Kim, a Korean-American entrepreneur who built Coupang from scratch into a $44.4 billion e-commerce giant, serves as the CEO of Coupang’s US parent company and the chair of its board of directors. He’s repeatedly declined to appear in person at previous parliamentary hearings, citing his residence abroad.
Lawmakers have long accused him of avoiding direct questioning on issues ranging from labor conditions and market dominance to warehouse fires. In his place, Coupang has typically sent senior executives, such as Seoul-based chief executive officers.
Last week, police conducted days of search-and-seizure operations at the company’s offices, collecting logs and internal records to determine whether there were systematic failures in its security controls. Authorities are also examining whether the stolen data has been misused, amid reports of suspected phishing attempts.
The company has admitted it took months to detect the breach, prompting an unusually sharp rebuke by President Lee Jae-myung, who called the delayed discovery “astonishing.” He has also urged the government to strengthen punitive measures so that companies face real consequences for negligence.
