Coupang

South Korea's Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) made four attempts between August 19-24, 2026 to investigate allegations that Coupang's automatic price-matching coupon (PMC) system shifted discount costs onto suppliers by deducting them from supplier settlement payments while leaving listed prices unchanged, a possible violation of the Large Retail Business Act. Coupang refused to cooperate, citing lack of prior notice -- the first time a Large Retail Business Act investigation was derailed by company resistance since the law's enactment. On September 1-2, 2026 the KFTC sent roughly 30 investigators to raid Coupang's Seoul headquarters, this time seeking about 10 years of data (2016-2026), an unusually broad scope compared to the typical 3-5 year window. Coupang maintains it bears the marketing costs itself and has filed suit to overturn a prior related KFTC decision; a court has temporarily suspended that decision's effect through September 23, 2026.

A worker was critically injured after being trapped by a forklift at a Coupang logistics warehouse around August 23, 2026. South Korea's labor ministry and police raided the logistics center on September 2, 2026 over the entrapment injury, with criminal charges pursued against warehouse management. The incident followed a pattern of worker-safety complaints raised by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions' courier union through August 2026, including multiple heat-related worker collapses at Coupang facilities during the summer.

South Korea's Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) fined Coupang a record 624.7 billion won (~$410M) after finding a former employee's compromised authentication keys allowed unauthorized access to internal systems from April to November 2025, exposing names, addresses, phone numbers, order history, and building access passwords for 37.5 million users (33.2M members and 4.3M non-members). PIPC attributed the breach to inadequate baseline data-protection management rather than sophisticated hacking, and separately found Coupang had been unlawfully tracking the online activity of 11.2 million users. Subsidiary Coupang Fulfillment Services was separately fined 248 million won.

South Korea's Ministry of Employment and Labor launched an inspection into Coupang after courier Oh Seung-yong died having worked weeks averaging 83.4 hours; a fact-finding investigation by the Korean Delivery Workers' Union found couriers used colleagues' IDs to conceal shifts that exceeded legal consecutive-day work limits, and Oh's family alleged the company pressured them to avoid classifying his death as an industrial accident. South Korea does not legally cap overnight working hours. At least 46 Coupang-linked worker deaths have been recorded since 2020.