CEO of South Korean retail giant Coupang resigns after massive data breach
Park Dae-jun has resigned as chief executive of South Korean retail giant Coupang after a data breach exposed the personal information of more than half of the country’s population.
In a statement, Park apologized for the breach, citing a “deep sense of responsibility for the outbreak and the subsequent recovery process.”
Coupang has replaced Park with Harold Rogers, the top lawyer at Coupang’s U.S.-based parent company, according to a machine translation of the company statement.
The retail giant, often compared to Amazon for its dominance in South Korean e-commerce and logistics, last month revealed details of a data breach affecting close to 34 million people. The breach allegedly began in June but wasn’t noticed until November, when Coupang initially said over 4,500 customers had their data stolen. The company later revised that figure dramatically upward.
The Coupang hack is the latest in a string of security incidents affecting corporate giants and the central government across the country this year, including a data center fire that led to a massive, irretrievable loss of South Korean government data.
