Rep. Kim Hyun-jung of the Democratic Party of Korea delivered a rebuttal dossier to members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on the 29th. After the U.S. House released a Coupang report claiming that Korea was discriminating against Coupang, an American company, the lawmaker raised a counterargument at the parliamentary level.
In a press release that day, Kim said the report "was written to suggest that the Korean government has systematically discriminated against and attacked only American companies." She pointed out that "it even draws on past trade disputes in the automotive sector, which are not directly related to the Coupang case, using them as grounds to highlight an 'image of Korea discriminating against American companies.'"
Kim also assessed that the report "cites only Coupang's claims to state that 'the personal information actually stored amounts to only about 3,000 cases,' and describes the case as close to a 'small-scale internal deviation' centered on a former employee's unauthorized storage, thereby drastically minimizing the entire incident." Unlike the U.S. House's Coupang report, according to the Korean government's investigation, Coupang is known to have leaked approximately 33.67 million cases of personal information.
Accordingly, Kim sent the rebuttal dossier to members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee. The dossier contained the nature and limitations of the Coupang report, rebuttals to each key claim, and a reorganization of the facts.
It also included the approximately 33.67 million cases of personal information leaked as confirmed by the Korean government's investigation, the exposure of sensitive information such as phone numbers, addresses, and shared entrance passwords, and the point that in the case of large-scale breaches, multiple agencies may launch investigations simultaneously under relevant laws, and that this investigative structure applies equally to domestic companies.
Kim said, "The U.S. House Coupang report relies heavily on Coupang's one-sided claims and lobbying, without sufficiently reflecting the positions of the Korean government and regulators, the domestic legal framework, the objective facts of the case, and the Korea-U.S. FTA and international trade norms." She added, "Discussions based on facts, legal principles, and institutional context must come first, and the interests of an individual company must not result in distorting the Korea-U.S. alliance and trade relations."
She emphasized, "By delivering more accurate facts and legal principles to the U.S. Judiciary Committee, the National Assembly will continue to play its role so that the Korea-U.S. alliance and trade relations can be discussed based on accurate information rather than misunderstanding."
