Lee Gyu-lee is a business writer at The Korea Times, focusing primarily on IT & telecommunications, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and KOTRA. Prior to this, she has covered a wide range of cultural news, from film, television and K-pop to lifestyle and fashion.
Coupang's hiring process questioned for emphasis on Chinese nationals
An image of Coupang's job postings on China's popular recruitment platform, BOSS Zhipin / Captured from BOSS Zhipin
By Lee Gyu-lee
Coupang is facing intensifying scrutiny over its long-standing practice of aggressively hiring Chinese developers. The attention comes after revelations that a former Chinese employee is the prime suspect in the company’s recent massive data breach, which exposed the information of 33.7 million users.
Even with the growing security concerns and political pressure, the e-commerce giant remains tight-lipped about the exact scale of its workforce in China, but questions are rising regarding whether its offshore staffing strategy may have exacerbated its security vulnerabilities.
Coupang’s job postings for high‑paid developer roles can still easily be found on major Chinese recruitment platforms such as BOSS Zhipin and Liepin, as well as on the popular professional networking site Maimai. So far this year, job openings through verified Coupang accounts and headhunters have sought talent for positions such as back-end engineers, data scientists, and product managers, primarily based in Beijing and Shanghai, and occasionally in Seoul. The listings also included high-level positions such as senior director and vice president.
Many of the advertised roles are core platform jobs that could involve access to or control over critical systems, including back-end infrastructure, data pipelines and recommendation or advertising algorithms.
The controversy stems not merely from the nationality of the hires but from recent precedents that several major cyberattacks in Korea this year were traced to China-linked organizations. With many of the roles located in Beijing and Shanghai, observers say public concern is rising over the possibility that critical elements of Coupang’s systems could be developed overseas, and this structure inevitably allows them to handle sensitive information.
A posting on Chinese professional social networking platform Maimai / Captured from Maimai
Coupang Corp. CEO Park Dae-jun admitted during the science and technology committee’s hearing at the National Assembly on Tuesday that the prime suspect was a developer for the company’s authentication system.
The former employee is believed to have extracted customer information after leaving the company, using a signing key that Coupang failed to revoke or rotate after his departure.
Lawmakers are zeroing in on Coupang’s management of offshore development teams, arguing that the incident reflects a deeper governance failure of the company rather than an isolated act by a rogue former employee.
However, despite pledging to take full responsibility, Park has not addressed plans to improve the management of its foreign developers and has not disclosed its Chinese hiring status.
Rep. Kim Jang-kyom of the science committee requested the company to submit data on the monthly hiring of Chinese developers over the past five years, including Coupang Partners, and the overall hiring status of Chinese workers.
The company said it hires employees of various nationalities based on expertise, experience, and capabilities in operations and technology development. It declined to provide a breakdown of employees by nationality and denied rumors that 90 percent of Coupang’s tech-related staff are Chinese.
“It is stipulated that foreigners cannot work in national security or classified sectors at state institutions, and even in the case of private companies, it is difficult for the public to accept a situation where a Chinese national working in a core department that handles citizens’ personal data leaked the personal information of tens of millions of people,” Rep. Park Choong-kwon said during the committee’s hearing.
Coupang’s heavy reliance on Chinese developers is seen not only as a way to cut labor costs, but also as aligning naturally with its e‑commerce model, which more closely resembles Chinese platforms such as Alibaba and JD.com than the U.S.’ Amazon.
Unlike Amazon, which focuses on connecting sellers and buyers, Coupang directly purchases products, stores its own inventory and handles delivery in an integrated system, making it easier to rely on Chinese developers who are familiar with the model to build and run the tech systems behind it.