Court suspends Coupang's W200b fine over unauthorized data collection

A court has granted Coupang Inc.'s request to suspend enforcement of a fine of more than 200 billion won ($149 million) imposed by the Personal Information Protection Commission over the unauthorized collection of users' online activity data.

The First Administrative Division of the Seoul Administrative Court ruled Friday to accept Coupang's application to suspend the effect of the commission's fine, corrective order and public disclosure order. The 201.1 billion won penalty, along with the corrective and disclosure orders, will remain suspended until 30 days after the first-instance ruling in the main lawsuit.

The court said it found "a risk that the applicant would suffer irreparable harm, and an urgent need to suspend the effect of each disposition to prevent such harm has been demonstrated," adding that there was no indication the suspension would seriously affect public welfare or that the main claim was clearly without merit.

In administrative litigation, a stay of execution is a mechanism by which a court temporarily halts the effect or enforcement of an administrative agency's disposition. Under Article 23, Paragraph 2 of the Administrative Litigation Act, when a revocation suit has been filed, a court handling the main case may, upon a party's application or on its own authority, order a full or partial stay of a disposition's effect or its execution if it finds an urgent need to prevent irreparable harm that would arise from the disposition, its execution or the continuation of related procedures.

The Personal Information Protection Commission voted in June to impose the fine and issue a corrective order after finding that Coupang had collected, without consent, the browsing histories of about 11.17 million users on third-party websites and applications through its affiliate marketing program, Coupang Partners. Coupang subsequently filed a suit seeking to cancel the fine and other dispositions, along with the stay application.

Meanwhile, the Fourth Administrative Division of the Seoul Administrative Court ruled Thursday that there was no need to suspend the effect of a separate fine of more than 420 billion won that the commission imposed on Coupang in connection with a large-scale personal data breach, and dismissed that stay application. However, the court did suspend the corrective and public disclosure orders in that case.