Coupang probe intensifies as both Korea, US summon interim CEO

The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency on Friday summoned Coupang Korea’s interim CEO Harold Rogers for the second time over perjury allegations stemming from a hearing at the National Assembly in December.

“Coupang will continue to fully cooperate with all government investigations,” said Rogers as he showed up to a photo line before police questioning. “We will also faithfully and thoroughly cooperate with the police investigation today.”

On Jan. 30, the Coupang interim CEO underwent about 12 hours of police questioning over allegations of destroying evidence related to the firm’s data breach involving some 33.7 million accounts disclosed in November.

Coupang announced on Thursday that the personal information of about 165,000 additional user accounts was exposed in the cybersecurity incident. The company noted that the data from the newly identified accounts — including names, phone numbers and addresses — was not among what was stored by the perpetrator.

The country’s e-commerce leader previously stated that the hacker had saved information from only about 3,000 customer accounts, all of which was later deleted without being shared with third parties.

Rogers said in an email to Coupang employees on Thursday that he would fully cooperate with Seoul’s investigation, asking his colleagues to proactively take part in submitting information to authorities and related in-person interviews.

With Korea’s pangovernmental probe into Coupang’s data breach dragging on, US politicians have taken the matter into their hands to support Coupang, a Delaware-incorporated, New York-listed US company.

Rep. Jim Jordan, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform and Antitrust, have sent a request to Rogers to appear for a deposition at the committee’s hearing scheduled for February 23.

“The targeting of Coupang and the potential prosecution of its American executives serve as a sharp escalation of South Korea’s campaign against innovative American-owned companies and directly conflicts with its recent commitment to avoid discriminatory treatment and the creation of unnecessary barriers for US digital service providers,” said the congressmen in the letter to Rogers.

“We require communications between Coupang and the Korean government regarding the company’s compliance with foreign laws, regulations, judicial orders, or other government initiated efforts and how these foreign laws affect US companies.”

Coupang has not confirmed whether Rogers will attend the hearing in Washington.

A high-ranking Korean official told reporters in the US capital on Thursday that the American lawmakers’ subpoena to the Coupang interim CEO appears to be based on Coupang’s lobbying activities in the US.

According to OpenSecrets, an independent research group tracking US lobbying, Coupang has spent $8.22 million on lobbying between 2022 and 2025.