Police Conduct Coupang Search and Seizure for Second Day... Warrant Names 'Former Chinese Employee' as Suspect

The police are conducting a search and seizure of Coupang for the second consecutive day following the leak of personal information belonging to 33.7 million customers.

Delivery vehicles at a Coupang logistics center in downtown Seoul. Photo by Yonhap News

According to the police on December 10, the Cyber Investigation Unit of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency plans to conduct another search and seizure of Coupang's headquarters office located in Songpa-gu, Seoul, on this day.

It is reported that the police searched Coupang's office for about 10 hours from around 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. the previous day, securing digital evidence and other materials.

The search and seizure warrant issued to the police names a former employee of Chinese nationality as a suspect on charges of violating the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection, including unauthorized access to the information network and leakage of secrets. Park Daejoon, CEO of Coupang, explained during a National Assembly hearing on December 2 that this individual was a developer of Coupang's authentication system, and it is known that the person has already left the country.

Based on the materials obtained through the search and seizure, the police plan to comprehensively determine the route and causes of the personal information leak.

The police began an investigation after receiving a report from Coupang on November 18 confirming the personal information leak. Initially, Coupang stated that the number of affected individuals was around 4,500, but the number of leaked accounts has since increased to 33.7 million.

The police are also looking into whether there has been any secondary damage resulting from the Coupang personal information leak incident. To this end, they have obtained server log records and other data from Coupang and are tracking the IP addresses used in the crime.

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