420,000 Requests in Two Days: Customs Code Reissuance Surge After Coupang Data Breach

Sharp Surge in Customs Code Reissuance on November 30 and December 1
Korea Customs Service Website Temporarily Down

Following the personal information leak incident at Coupang, there has been a sharp increase in users seeking to reissue their personal customs clearance codes (customs codes).

A massive personal information leak incident involving over 30 million cases has occurred at Coupang. This scale exceeds the economically active population of 29.69 million, making it the worst leak incident in history.
Coupang headquarters exterior.

According to data submitted by the office of Assemblyman Jeong Ilyoung of the Democratic Party of Korea to the Korea Customs Service on December 2, the number of customs code reissuances was recorded at 123,302 cases on November 30 and 298,742 cases on December 1. The total number of reissuances processed over these two days is four times the cumulative number of reissuances from January to October this year (111,045 cases).

The customs code is a number assigned to identify who is importing goods during customs clearance for overseas direct purchases. It can be checked or reissued through the Korea Customs Service's electronic customs clearance system (UNIPASS).

The number of customs code cancellations, which typically averaged 10 to 20 cases per day, surged to 3,851 cases on November 30 and 11,312 cases on December 1. The number of customs code suspensions also increased significantly from an average of 100 cases per day to 4,514 cases on November 30 and 6,322 cases on December 1.

This surge appears to be driven by concerns that customs codes may also have been leaked following the Coupang personal information breach, prompting a large number of overseas direct purchase users to seek reissuance. On social networking services (SNS) and online communities, information on how to reissue customs codes was shared, and posts certifying that users had reissued their codes spread widely.

The Korea Customs Service's UNIPASS website temporarily crashed due to a surge in visitors. The Korea Customs Service announced, "Due to increased traffic on UNIPASS and server processing delays, some services may not be available," adding, "We are currently working to stabilize the service and will provide updates once normal operations resume."

Some consumers dissatisfied with Coupang's response have begun so-called 'leaving Coupang' campaigns or are moving toward class action lawsuits. It is reported that they are creating Naver Cafes or KakaoTalk open chat rooms to discuss joint response measures.

Coupang announced that the exposed information was limited to customer names, emails, phone numbers, addresses, and some order information, and did not include payment details or credit card numbers. It was also reported that customs codes were not leaked.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.