Court suspends 201.1 bln-won fine imposed on Coupang for unauthorized user data collection

On Friday, a court temporarily halted a 147.74 million U.S. dollar fine imposed on e-commerce giant Coupang Corp. for unauthorized collection of user data, officials announced. Coupang had previously sued to nullify the penalties imposed by the Personal Information Protection Commission for gathering online activity records of approximately 11.17 million users without permission and storing them in its database.

Simultaneously, Coupang also sought an injunction against the fine. The Seoul Administrative Court granted Coupang's injunction request and suspended the enforcement of the fine until 30 days after the initial verdict on the lawsuit aiming to cancel the surcharges, citing worries that the penalty might inflict irreversible harm on the company.

Separately, the commission had imposed a fine of 423.6 billion won on Coupang for a data breach affecting over 37 million users, the most substantial fine ever issued by the privacy regulator to an individual entity. Coupang had filed an injunction request to postpone the fine, but a separate panel of the court had yet to rule on the matter.