Personal Information Protection Commission Chairperson Song Kyung-hee speaks during a briefing on Coupang's data breach at Government Complex Seoul, Thursday. Yonhap
Coupang was slapped with a record-high fine of 624.7 billion won ($409 million) for a massive data breach involving more than 33 million users, marking the largest privacy penalty in Korea, a regulatory authority said Thursday.
The penalty is roughly equivalent to the e-commerce giant's operating profit of 679 billion won reported last year.
According to the Personal Information Protection Commission, the company was fined 423.6 billion won over the data breach and an additional 201.1 billion won for the unauthorized collection of users' online activity records and other violations.
A joint government-civilian investigation led by the Ministry of Science and ICT concluded that the individual responsible for the breach gained access to the personal information of approximately 37.5 million users.
