San Francisco Frontiers - South Korea police raid e-commerce giant Coupang over data leak

Coupang is South Korea's most popular online shopping platform, serving millions of customers with lightning-fast deliveries of products from groceries to gadgets.

But the company suffered a massive data leak this year and was forced to alert customers that their names, email addresses, phone numbers, shipping addresses and some order histories had been exposed.

Payment details and login credentials were not affected, it said.

Coupang had told authorities the personal information of 33.7 million customers had been leaked -- almost two-thirds of the population of the country.

On Tuesday police in Seoul conducted a "search and seizure" operation at Coupang's South Korean headquarters, describing it as a "necessary measure to accurately understand the incident".

Seventeen officers from the force's cyber investigation unit were deployed, with law enforcement vowing to "comprehensively investigate" based on the evidence obtained.

Last week, President Lee Jae Myung called for swift action to penalise those responsible for the debacle.

Seoul has said the leak took place through Coupang's overseas servers from June 24 to November 8.

The company only became aware of it last month, according to police and local media, when it issued a complaint against the alleged culprit -- a former employee who is a Chinese national.

The firm is now facing a class action lawsuit in the United States, where its global headquarters is based, over the leak, Yonhap news agency reported.

- Exposed -

And Seoul's presidential office said Monday that the firm needed to provide answers over how it would compensate users who have had data stolen.

"Coupang must present clear measures outlining how it will take responsibility if damages occur," presidential chief of staff Kang Hoon-sik said, according to Yonhap.

The case follows a major breach at South Korea's largest mobile carrier SK Telecom, which was fined 134 billion won ($91 million) in August after a cyberattack exposed data on nearly 27 million users.

South Korea, among the world's most wired countries, has also been a target of hacking by arch-rival North Korea.

Police announced last year that North Korean hackers were behind the theft of sensitive data from a South Korean court computer network -- including individuals' financial records -- over a two-year period.

And last month, Yonhap reported that South Korean authorities suspected a North Korean hacking group may be behind the recent cyberattack on cryptocurrency exchange Upbit, which led to the unauthorised withdrawal of 44.5 billion won in digital assets.

R.Baker--SFF