More than fifty House Republicans have accused South Korea’s government of running a coordinated campaign against American-owned companies, and a newly released congressional report puts a covert laptop recovery mission inside China at the center of the case.
The House Judiciary Committee’s interim staff report, first detailed by Fox News Digital, alleges that Seoul has “used digital laws and regulations as a way to target American companies and limit their ability to operate successfully in South Korea.” The report focuses on Coupang Inc., the Seattle-based e-commerce company often called the “Amazon of Korea,” founded by a Korean-American entrepreneur. What began as a data breach by a former employee, a Chinese national, has spiraled into a geopolitical confrontation involving South Korea’s intelligence service, a record-breaking $410 million fine, and now a formal protest from the U.S. Congress.
Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the most senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee after Chairman Jim Jordan, led the letter to South Korean Ambassador Kyung-wha Kang raising concerns over what the lawmakers called “discriminatory” business practices aimed at American firms.
The chain of events starts with a security breach. Last June, a former senior Coupang engineer, a Chinese national, began accessing company data and consumer information from outside South Korea. The individual admitted to stealing an authentication key to gain access. By November, Coupang’s internal security team confirmed the breach and reported it to the Korea Internet & Security Agency, disclosing that roughly 3,000 accounts had been compromised.
Then came the mission that now sits at the center of the dispute.
The Judiciary Committee report states that South Korea’s National Intelligence Service told Coupang officials “that they were part of the joint government investigation” and that the company was “legally required” to “work with them.” The stolen data, stored on a laptop, had ended up at the bottom of a river in China, near Shanghai, per the report’s account. Coupang deployed a dive team to recover it in a covert operation on Chinese soil.
Fox News Digital noted it has not independently authenticated video footage of the recovery. But the consequences of the mission are not in dispute. Park Dae-jun resigned as CEO of Coupang Inc. Harold Rogers, appointed interim CEO of the South Korean subsidiary Coupang Corp., appeared before the South Korean National Assembly in late December and testified under oath that the NIS had instructed the company to retrieve the stolen data.
South Korean officials denied the NIS ever gave such an instruction. They berated Rogers during the hearing. Then they called for him to face perjury charges.
Rogers has not been formally charged or indicted.
In June, South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission imposed a $410 million penalty on Coupang, the largest privacy fine in the country’s history. The South Korean embassy told Fox News Digital the sanctions “remain below the statutory maximum” and that Coupang retains the right to challenge the fine in court. Coupang has said it will do exactly that.
The financial damage extends well beyond the fine itself. Coupang’s stock has fallen more than 45 percent since the company disclosed the breach and Seoul’s regulatory actions intensified. The Judiciary Committee report notes that the stock decline “has negatively affected U.S. investors, including public pension funds, mutual funds, and everyday Americans just trying to save for retirement.”
That line captures the real-world cost of what congressional Republicans describe as a politically motivated regulatory assault. This is not an abstract trade dispute. American retirement accounts are lighter because of it.
The pattern of aggressive enforcement extends beyond Coupang. The committee report alleges that the Korea Fair Trade Commission “has been particularly aggressive in using competition policy to attack American companies.” Proposed legislation in South Korea’s National Assembly would broaden the KFTC’s authority even further. The concern among U.S. lawmakers is that regulatory frameworks ostensibly designed for fairness are being weaponized against foreign competitors, specifically American ones.
Issa drew a direct line between Seoul’s political shift and the treatment of U.S. firms. Conservative President Yoon Suk-yeol was impeached in December 2024 after his controversial decision to impose martial law over what he described as “anti-state forces” led by the country’s Democratic Party. Lee Jae-myung, who narrowly lost to Yoon in 2022, won the presidency in 2025. His Democratic Party holds a substantial majority in the National Assembly.
Issa did not hold back in an April interview with Fox News Digital:
“South Korea is still an important strategic partner, but their last election led to a left-wing government closely aligned with China that, among other things, has begun attacking American companies.”
He described Coupang as a company “owned by and founded by a Korean-American” that has been “systematically attacked quite frankly, probably because they’re an American company and effectively a unicorn in South Korea.”
Issa also pointed to a broader regulatory trend. He said South Korea “has adopted the European digital rules which are very much designed to localize rather than accept the great companies that have spread very well around the world because they’ve earned it.” The charge is that Seoul is borrowing from the EU’s playbook of digital protectionism, a strategy that has long frustrated American tech companies operating in Europe.
The theft of proprietary technology and data by individuals with ties to China is not a new concern for U.S. policymakers. A former CIA officer recently told the Senate about a Google engineer who allegedly stole AI secrets and built a company for Beijing. The Coupang case adds a new wrinkle: a U.S. ally’s government allegedly directing the American company into a covert operation on Chinese territory, then turning on the company when its executive testified about what happened.
A June model from the Competere Foundation estimated that if South Korea continues implementing policies harmful to U.S. businesses, the damage could reach $525 billion in lost economic activity across American states over the next decade. California alone would face an estimated $123 billion hit. Texas stood to lose $48.7 billion, New York $33.9 billion, and Washington state, home to Coupang’s headquarters, $27.4 billion.
Shanker Singham, the foundation’s CEO and an international trade economist, offered a blunt assessment:
“Korea is already an increasingly unfriendly place for [U.S. companies] to do business. The looming regulations will make that environment even worse.”
Those numbers are projections, not certainties. But they reflect a growing consensus among trade analysts that Seoul’s regulatory trajectory threatens real American economic interests, not in the abstract, but in specific states where workers, investors, and pension holders bear the cost.
The South Korean embassy disputed the committee’s characterization of events. A spokesperson told Fox News Digital that the government “regrets that the interim staff report published by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee published appears to be largely based on the unilateral assertions of Coupang and respectfully disagrees with several characterizations in the report.”
The embassy affirmed that South Korea “is fully committed to ensuring a fair and non-discriminatory business environment for all companies regardless of their nationality.” It noted the fine remained below statutory limits and emphasized Coupang’s right to a legal challenge.
Coupang itself struck a conciliatory tone. A company spokesperson said the firm “regrets the circumstances that led to the House Judiciary Committee’s investigation” and remains “committed to finding a constructive resolution so Coupang can once again serve as a bridge to strengthen the U.S.-Korea alliance, accelerating trade and investment that benefits both countries.”
The broader geopolitical landscape adds urgency. The U.S. is navigating complex alliances across the Indo-Pacific while simultaneously confronting major confrontations elsewhere. A fractured relationship with South Korea, historically one of America’s closest Asian allies, would complicate that picture considerably.
Several critical facts remain unresolved. The identity of the Chinese national who stole the authentication key has not been publicly disclosed. The exact legal statutes South Korea cited for the $410 million fine are not detailed in the committee report. Whether the covert laptop recovery was conducted with or without Chinese government knowledge remains unclear. And the perjury threat against Harold Rogers hangs in limbo, no formal charges have materialized, but the accusation itself serves as a warning to any American executive who might contradict Seoul’s official narrative under oath.
The Judiciary Committee report also raises questions about the intersection of law and political motivation, whether enforcement actions that appear neutral on paper are being selectively applied to achieve a political objective. South Korea insists its policies apply equally. The committee’s documentation suggests otherwise.
The letter from fifty-plus House Republicans puts Seoul on formal notice. The Judiciary Committee report provides the factual scaffolding for potential legislative or diplomatic action. Coupang’s court challenge to the $410 million fine will test whether South Korea’s regulatory process can withstand independent scrutiny.
For American investors, workers, and retirees whose portfolios have already absorbed a 45 percent stock decline, the stakes are concrete and immediate. For policymakers, the question is whether a treaty ally is using regulatory power to punish American success while drifting closer to Beijing.
When an allied government allegedly sends an American company on a covert dive mission into a Chinese river, then threatens its CEO with perjury for saying so under oath, the word “ally” starts to need some fine print.
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