While the Taiwanese government imposed a fine in the range of 60 million won on Coupang for a local customer personal information leak incident, South Korea is facing criticism that its penalty level is excessively severe. This is because, although it is the same incident, South Korea imposed an administrative fine of 600 billion won.
According to industry sources on the 21st, Taiwan's Ministry of Digital Affairs (MODA) imposed a total of 1.5 million New Taiwan dollars (approximately 65 million won), consisting of 750,000 New Taiwan dollars each on Coupang's Taiwanese subsidiary and its company representative, along with an order to correct the violation, in connection with the personal information leak incident.
Previously, Taiwan had been investigating an incident in which information such as names, email addresses, and phone numbers of approximately 200,000 local users were leaked due to an attack by a former employee of Coupang's Korean subsidiary. It is reported that MODA determined this to be a general security measure violation incident, considering that there was no secondary financial damage and that the company had completed consumer compensation and improvement measures.
Due to Taiwan's government's decision, criticism has emerged that South Korea's penalty level is too severe. The Personal Information Protection Commission imposed an administrative fine of 624.7 billion won on Coupang last June for reasons including personal information leaks and unauthorized collection. Of this amount, the administrative fine limited to the leak incident was approximately 423.6 billion won, which translates to about 11,250 won per leaked individual. This is 35 times higher than Taiwan's approximately 318 won.
The reason for the difference in the scale of administrative fines despite it being the same incident lies in the different legal calculation methods. South Korea has adopted a system that imposes an administrative fine of up to 3% of the average sales revenue over the previous three years. In contrast, Taiwan sets a cap on administrative fines by categorizing incidents only as general accidents or serious violations.
As a result, some voices are arguing that South Korea's administrative fine scale is excessively punitive compared to global standards. Controversy has also arisen because the administrative fine imposed on Coupang in South Korea is larger than the globally highest-level administrative fine (380 billion won) imposed on Meta, which had over 500 million pieces of information leaked.
An industry official stated, "If we assume Coupang's annual sales in Taiwan are in the trillions of won and apply the 'up to 3% of sales' rule like in South Korea, the administrative fine could have reached hundreds of billions of won." However, "as a result, due to policy differences regarding leak incidents for the same case, the level of administrative fines imposed has become significantly divergent."
in LIVING
