South Korean police have raided the headquarters of e-commerce giant Coupang following a massive data breach that compromised nearly 34 million user accounts. The incident has already triggered a significant loss of users and is shaping up to be one of the largest personal data leaks in the country’s history.
The raid was conducted by the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency’s Cyber Investigation Division. Seventeen investigators, including the division chief, seized internal documents and server logs from Coupang’s headquarters in Seoul’s Songpa district.
Coupang has officially confirmed the cyber incident, stating that the breach was limited to South Korean users. Investigators believe the leak may have been carried out by a former employee of Chinese nationality, who allegedly exploited lingering access tokens that were not revoked after leaving the company.
Cybersecurity experts point to serious identity and access management (IAM) failures. According to SecurityScorecard’s CISO, dormant credentials and insufficient access revocation allowed large-scale data exfiltration — a critical lapse for a platform operating at Coupang’s scale.
Data from IGAWorks MobileIndex shows that Coupang lost more than 2 million daily active users after publicly disclosing the breach, highlighting the immediate impact on customer trust. South Korean authorities have stated that no secondary crimes, such as phishing or fraud, have yet been linked to the leaked data.
Police continue to analyze seized digital evidence, and the investigation is expected to take more than a day due to the size and complexity of Coupang’s infrastructure.
The Coupang breach underscores a harsh reality: access management failures can scale into national-level incidents. A single overlooked account can undermine even the most advanced platforms. The outcome of this investigation may redefine security and compliance expectations for large e-commerce and tech companies in South Korea.
