E-commerce giant Coupang has hired a top-tier US law firm to represent it in a US lawsuit tied to its massive data breach, bolstering its legal defense in the face of potential liability exposure in US courts.
According to industry sources Monday, Coupang Inc., the US-listed parent company of Coupang, recently appointed Kirkland & Ellis as counsel in a damages lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Kirkland & Ellis is the world’s largest law firm by revenue, with $8.8 billion in gross revenue in 2024.
The move comes in response to a lawsuit filed by SJKP, which said it submitted a collective-action complaint earlier in February, seeking $5 million in damages against Coupang Inc. and Chair Bom Kim over a data breach affecting 33 million customers in Korea.
SJKP alleged that Coupang violated its duty to protect personal data and reduced spending that should have been allocated to security infrastructure. While the alleged breach occurred in Korea, the law firm said it seeks to hold senior executives at Coupang’s US headquarters accountable, arguing they made key decisions on security policies, budgeting and incident-response protocols.
More than 7,000 alleged victims have participated in the case, the sources said.
The dispute follows mounting regulatory scrutiny of Coupang in Korea and has spilled over into Seoul-Washington tensions over alleged discrimination against the US-listed company.
Harold Rogers, CEO of Coupang’s Korean unit, is scheduled to appear before the US House Judiciary Committee on Monday as part of an inquiry into whether regulators unfairly targeted an American firm operating abroad.
minmin@heraldcorp.com
