Seoul pledges to keep Coupang probe from spilling into broader alliance cooperation National Security Adviser Wi Sung-lac briefs reporters on Friday at the Chunghwa Press Center on President Lee Jae Myung's participation in next week's NATO summit and his state visit to Mongolia. (Yonhap) South Korea’s presidential office on Friday rejected a US congressional report accusing Seoul of discriminating against Coupang, calling its claims “inaccurate” and “at odds with the facts.”“We do not treat any business activities differently based on nationality, nor do we target any individual or entity for investigation,” National Security Adviser Wi Sung-lac said when asked about Cheong Wa Dae's position on the report during a press briefing in Seoul.“The report recently issued by the US House Judiciary Committee does not adequately reflect our position and appears to only extensively incorporate Coupang’s unilateral claims. We regret that.”Wi underlined that the Korean “government will continue its efforts to stay in close contact with the US Congress and administration and provide accurate information.”The US House Judiciary Committee released a report Wednesday titled “South Korea’s Discriminatory Attacks on American-Owned Businesses.” It characterized South Korea’s investigation into a massive data breach at Coupang, a US-listed e-commerce giant, as a “harassment campaign.”The report also alleged that “South Korean regulators have consistently targeted Coupang and subjected the company to hostile regulatory treatment, unfair enforcement practices, and disproportionately large penalties not faced by their Korean competitors.”Rebutting the report, Wi stressed that “the investigation into Coupang is being conducted in a nondiscriminatory manner, in accordance with domestic law and due process.”“Therefore, the report’s claims that the investigation is discriminatory, that it is being carried out in a targeted manner, and that unfair regulatory practices are continuing are sharply at odds with the facts,” he said.South Korean authorities are investigating a data leak involving a former Coupang backend engineer, a Chinese national who left the company in 2024 after allegedly taking an alphanumeric backup key. In November 2025, Coupang revealed to the public for the first time that its information security team had detected unauthorized access and a potential data breach.Wi said the government and Coupang appear to have fundamentally different views of the case, particularly regarding the scale of the alleged data breach.“A key issue is the scope of the data leak. According to our authorities’ investigation, more than 33 million personal records were exposed,” Wi said. “Coupang and the suspect maintain that only about 3,000 records were extracted and stored, but that is their claim.”Wi added that the "government does not view the matter so simply."“If Coupang sees it that way, it would amount to downplaying and underestimating the seriousness of the issue,” he said.Wi said South Korean investigative authorities have had difficulty determining how the data was used after it was accessed or where it may have been transferred, noting that the more than 33 million compromised records could include personal information belonging to US citizens residing in South Korea.“If personal information equivalent to about two-thirds of the US population had been leaked to China and we did not know how it had been viewed or used, it would inevitably be an extremely serious issue in the US,” Wi said.Wi further dismissed the report's claims that Cheong Wa Dae was involved in the Coupang investigation.The US congressional report alleged that “a high-ranking official within South Korea’s Presidential Office had specifically instructed Coupang to work closely with the National Intelligence Service (NIS) in order to recover the devices from the former employee and deliver them to the NIS.” The NIS is South Korea’s intelligence agency.“This, too, is completely untrue,” Wi said.Wi also said Seoul would seek to keep the Coupang issue from affecting other pending matters between the allies.“We will make efforts to ensure that the Coupang issue does not affect other issues between Korea and the US, and to keep it separate and isolated,” Wi said.The remarks came after Wi previously publicly acknowledged that the Coupang investigation had affected follow-up consultations on the bilateral Joint Fact Sheet agreed to in November 2025. Those talks include discussions on South Korea’s plan to build nuclear-powered submarines and expand its rights to uranium enrichment and spent-fuel reprocessing for peaceful purposes.“We must make efforts to prevent that from happening again,” Wi said.After months of delays, the allies held the kickoff meeting for their official consultations on nuclear cooperation in Seoul in early June and agreed to move quickly to produce tangible outcomes from their nuclear cooperation initiatives.