SEOUL — South Korea’s antitrust regulator has imposed a fine of 2.19 billion won ($1.54 million) on e-commerce giant Coupang for pressuring suppliers to lower prices and shoulder advertising costs to protect its profit margins.
The Fair Trade Commission said Thursday that Coupang violated the Act on Fair Transactions in Large Retail Businesses by forcing suppliers to absorb costs, delaying payments and failing to pay interest on late payments. The regulator also issued corrective orders aimed at addressing the violations.
Coupang, described by the watchdog as the dominant player in South Korea’s online shopping market, “forced suppliers to make sacrifices to maintain its own profit margins,” the FTC said.
The regulator added that the penalty is intended to reform Coupang’s margin management practices and other core business models that place pressure on suppliers, in order to prevent a recurrence and improve fair trade practices in the online retail sector.
The company is also facing heightened scrutiny following a recent data breach. Authorities previously said the incident affected 33.6 million users, though Coupang has maintained that data from only about 3,000 accounts was leaked.
On Wednesday, Coupang said that approximately 200,000 Taiwanese accounts were accessed in the breach, which affected about 33 million accounts in total.
The company said it had engaged cybersecurity firms Mandiant and Palo Alto Networks to conduct a comprehensive forensic investigation after the breach was discovered in November 2025.
“This was a crime committed by a former employee against Coupang and against our customers. While legal actions are outside our control, we have continuously called for this bad actor to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” the company said in a statement.
According to Coupang, Mandiant determined that the former employee’s unauthorized activity “included access to approximately 200,000 accounts in Taiwan.” The company added that “no highly sensitive data” was accessed and said there is no evidence that any of the customer data was viewed, shared with or transferred to any other individual.
The investigation remains ongoing. (Source: IANS)
