Note: I am not affiliated with any lawfirm and receive absolutely zero benefits if you participate, this post is purely informative. None of this is legal advice, I Am Not A Lawyer.
What happened?
Coupang leaked the names, phone numbers, emails, addresses, and apartment entrance codes of about 33.7 million accounts. If you’ve ever used Coupang, you were probably among them. It’s especially bad because they didn’t even get hacked. What happened?
Imagine if the Louvre gave a master key to an employee after which they walked out with the Mona Lisa in hand without anyone noticing. That would be crazy, because while of course there’s always a need for some staff to have the keys to the building, common sense would be to secure the painting so that even those employees can’t just silently take it home. And of course, the Louvre does so or else it would’ve disappeared long ago.
Unfortunately, Coupang didn’t do this. Incredible, right? Some have been trying to shift focus to the nationality of the employee, but you can probably tell how this security failure is so bad that it really doesn’t matter where they were from.
Getting justice and hopefully ₩100,000
Of course this level of negligence is punishable, so class action lawsuits are going at full speed, with more than 500,000 people already signed up. Similar cases in Korea resulted in payouts of roughly 100k won per person. Now if justice was served than they would add least add inflation to this, but even a “free” 100k is still not bad - and it doubles as punishment for Coupang.
If you want to participate, or just curious if you’re affected, check if you received a text message from Coupang on November 29th 2025 about their data leak. If so, then your data was part of the leak, and you’re eligible to participate. I recommend taking screenshots of this text message just in case, Korea works in mysterious ways sometimes.
It’s very easy to sign up for the class action with one of the lawfirms, and can be done for free. Some of them are not free, which comes with potential advantages, depending on your preferences. When choosing a lawfirm there are 3 main factors.
- Do they ask for money up front? Some do, some don’t.
- What % of the payout will they keep?
- How are they receiving applications?
Option 1 - Free to participate
- Lawfirm: 일로
- % payout: You 70%, Them 30%
- Applications: (Make sure to write your name as on your ARC but with any spaces removed) - https://form.naver.com/response/RIPaEHe34E33xNm1-J29sQ
- Applicants so far: 290,000+
Why did I not pick this one even though you don’t need to pay anything upfront? The way this one works is that you first apply through the above form, and then later they send you the actual 모두싸인 (think a Korean version of DocuSign) contract later. I just wanted to get it done with as quickly as possible and was happy to pay 10k for it. But if you rather not pay upfront, and are happy to wait for them to send the real document to sign, then it seems like a good option.
Option 2 - 10k won to participate (I chose this one)
- Lawfirm: 지향
- % payout: You 90%, Them 10%
- Applications: https://www.jihyanglaw.com/?p=3643
- Applicants so far: 70,000+
I went with this one because they immediately give the 모두싸인 form, so it should be a one-and-done, though it does involve the step of sending them the 10k won. So really a 1.5-and-done. Still, 1.5 < 2.
Options 3-??
There are at least a dozen lawfirms participating. If you want to see more of them, you can read here (Korean). I highlighted the above two because I feel they represent mainstream options.