The headquarters of the country’s e-commerce giant Coupang in Seoul. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Sept. 28 (Korea Bizwire) — E-commerce giant Coupang Inc. is facing suspicion that its customer data is being managed by a subsidiary in China and the risk of information leakage is high since the Chinese government can access such information.
Independent lawmaker Yang Jung-suk claimed that Coupang has stored and managed customer and location information through Chinese subsidiary Hallym Network by transferring data collected from the Coupang app.
Yang stressed that given that the Chinese government can access such information anytime under current private information protection laws, the risk of information leakage is high.
In fact, Google provided user data to the Hong Kong government in response to three out of 43 requests made last year.
Primarily due to such concerns, other platform companies such as Naver, Kakao and Woowa Brothers are storing data in a third country rather than China.
With respect to this issue, Coupang claimed in a statement that its user data is stored in South Korea and it has never transferred or stored any personal information in China.
Coupang added that Hallym Network is a tech subsidiary and the rumor that it stores user data through this subsidiary was completely groundless.
J. S. Shin (js_shin@koreabizwire.com)
