Police raid Coupang HQ amid 34 million account data breach, CEO resigns

Weeks after a major data leak at Coupang exposed 33.7 million customer accounts, police conducted a raid at the company’s headquarters as part of an ongoing investigation. Chief Executive Officer Park Dae-jun resigns.

Police in Seoul have raided the headquarters of e-commerce giant Coupang, which is often referred to as the “Amazon of South Korea.” The move is part of an ongoing investigation into a major data breach that occurred last month, with South Korea’s top online retailer having almost 34 million customer accounts leaked.

Coupang has acknowledged the cyber incident, confirming that millions of accounts were compromised. The leak was localized to Korea.

Today, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency's Cyber Investigation Division confirmed that 17 investigators, including Division Chief Lee Byung-jin, conducted a search and seizure at the company’s Songpa-gu office.

The officers cited by Yonhap-News claimed “this search and seizure is an essential measure to accurately understand the case.” Based on their findings, the police plan “to comprehensively investigate the overall facts of the case, including the leaker of personal information, the route of the leak, and the cause.”

So far, the main suspect behind the leak is a Chinese national who was formerly employed by the company.

"Reports indicate that a former employee exploited lingering access tokens to extract data, underscoring how identity and access management gaps can quickly spiral into major exposure. For a company operating at Coupang’s size, access governance isn’t just a back‑office process, it’s a frontline defense. Credentials need to be revoked the moment roles change, and continuous validation must ensure that no dormant accounts remain exploitable," said Steve Cobb, Chief Information Security Officer at SecurityScorecard.

Aju Press reports that officers have confiscated digital evidence, such as internal documents and server logs, which could be linked to the breach. The same site is also citing data from IGAWorks MobileIndex, which shows that the number of Coupang’s daily active users has dropped by more than 2.04 million since the company disclosed the breach, estimating that many people left the platform after checking whether their accounts were affected.

The investigation is ongoing, and police have pledged to take “necessary legal measures” once the full extent of the data leak is determined. Considering the size of Coupang’s systems, it is estimated that the raid could take longer than a day to process all the collected data.

South Korea’s authorities have said that they have not registered any follow-up crimes, such as phishing attempts, after the reported data leak.

Coupang has not yet commented publicly on the raid. However, the company has announced that its Chief Executive Officer Park Dae-jun has resigned, taking responsibility for a huge data breach at the company. The company stated that Harold Rogers, the chief administrative officer of its parent company in the United States, will take over as temporary CEO.

Unlock more exclusive Cybernews content on YouTube.