SEOUL, September 07 (AJP) -South Korea’s dispute with e-commerce giant Coupang is likely to loom over ties with Washington beyond the U.S. midterm elections as concerns over Seoul’s regulation of American technology companies have taken root across party lines, South Korean lawmakers and policy experts observed Monday.
“There is no guarantee the situation will improve even if the Democrats take the majority in the November midterm elections,” Woo Jeong-yeop, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, public think tank based in Washington D.C., said at a forum at the National Assembly Members’ Office Building in Seoul.
Woo cautioned against viewing the mounting pressure from Washington simply as the product of Coupang’s lobbying, arguing that skepticism toward South Korean trade and regulatory practices had already been embedded in U.S. politics before the company became a bilateral flashpoint.
“Coupang’s lobbying alone cannot explain how the current situation developed,” Woo said. “If we diagnose the problem that way, we will get the diagnosis wrong.”
The forum dubbed “The South Korea-U.S. Alliance at a Crossroads,” was organized by Rep. Kim Gunn of the main opposition People Power Party (PPP) to discuss the future of the alliance following the U.S. midterm elections as well as North Korea, trade disputes and other sources of bilateral friction.
Woo said the political narrative surrounding foreign regulation of U.S. technology companies had already been established through Washington’s earlier disputes with the European Union and Canada over digital taxes and related rules.
The narrative was already in place before Coupang,” Woo said.
The Coupang controversy began as a domestic data-privacy issue following a massive personal-data leak in November 2025 involving about 37.55 million people.
South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission imposed a fine of about 624.7 billion won ($466 million) on the company in June.
Coupang has challenged the penalty, while the dispute has expanded in Washington into questions over whether South Korean regulation discriminates against U.S. companies.
The issue has since drawn scrutiny from Congress and the Trump administration, with potential investor-state dispute settlement proceedings and a Section 301 trade petition also being raised.
Woo said the speed of that escalation reflected a broader political framework already operating in Washington.
He noted that within about five months, a domestic controversy involving Coupang had developed into a bilateral trade issue involving a formal investigation by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, a meeting with the U.S. vice president and letters from senators.
Woo also recalled that Coupang itself had once attracted surprisingly little attention in Washington despite being listed in the United States.
“U.S. experts who had visited Korea would come back and ask me why Koreans kept talking so much about Coupang and what kind of influence the Coupang issue actually had,” he said. “Even a high-ranking State Department official who had served at the US Embassy in Korea did not know that Coupang was an American company,” Woo added. “Washington itself did not have that much interest in Coupang.”
The political environment has since shifted markedly. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, has become one of the most vocal U.S. lawmakers criticizing South Korea’s treatment of American companies.
His committee opened oversight into Seoul’s regulatory practices and released an interim report in July accusing South Korea of discriminatory treatment of Coupang and other U.S.-owned companies.
Woo noted that Jordan had raised concerns about the Korea Fair Trade Commission and South Korean trade practices before the Coupang dispute intensified.
“Coupang did not create Jim Jordan,” Woo said. “He was already highly critical of South Korea’s trade practices.”
Republicans have been particularly vocal partly because of President Donald Trump’s unusually strong grip on the party, Woo said, but a Democratic takeover of Congress would not necessarily reduce the pressure.
Concerns about South Korea’s information-network rules and online-platform regulation were also present under the Biden administration, he said, suggesting that the issue has broader bipartisan roots.
“The lobbying logic surrounding Coupang can be transplanted across party lines,” Woo said. “A strategy of simply waiting things out may be possible, but the fundamental solution is to change how the US political establishment views Korea.”
Woo also stressed that lobbying should be understood as a long-term process built around relationships rather than a short-term attempt to influence individual decisions.
“Lobbying is something everyone does,” Woo said. “It is difficult to succeed through a short-term approach. Relationships create access, and access creates influence.”
South Korea, he said, should focus less on figures who are well known in Seoul and more on people who command credibility and influence in Washington.
“We should use people Washington knows, rather than people we know,” he said.
Former Trade Minister Jeong In-kyo said the Coupang dispute should be viewed as part of a broader pattern of simultaneous U.S. pressure on South Korea.
Jeong identified five major sources of friction: tariffs and trade, Coupang and digital regulation, North Korea and joint military exercises, implementation of South Korea’s $350 billion U.S. investment commitment, and Washington’s demands related to Iran and the Strait of Hormuz.
He described the situation as a form of “linkage” pressure in which disputes that might previously have been addressed separately increasingly affect one another.
Trade friction can spill into investment negotiations, digital regulation and security burden-sharing, he said, creating a “ratchet” effect in which a concession in one area may lead to additional demands elsewhere.
Jeong argued that Seoul should resist responding with similarly arbitrary measures and instead reinforce predictable rules, non-discrimination and proportionality.
In the short term, South Korea should demonstrate progress on its first major U.S. investment project and use summit diplomacy to restore confidence, he said.
Over the longer term, Seoul should seek to separate trade and security issues where possible while strengthening cooperation with other middle powers around common rules.
Senior PPP lawmakers at the forum said the widening economic friction reflected broader strain in the bilateral alliance.
“The South Korea-US alliance is being put to the test,” Kim said, citing tariffs, investment in the United States, joint military exercises and North Korea’s nuclear program.
“Trade and security issues are becoming intricately intertwined,” Kim said. “Rather than conducting diplomacy that merely follows individual issues as they arise, we need an all-out diplomatic effort toward the United States.”
PPP Rep. Yoon Sang-hyun said pressure from the Trump administration was intensifying and criticized Seoul for failing to move quickly enough on discussions over a possible military contribution related to the Strait of Hormuz.
“Diplomacy is about timing,” Yoon said. “The discussion over deployment is already far too late.”
Yoon called for the creation of a bipartisan strategic team bringing together leading South Korean foreign policy and security specialists, warning that renewed U.S.-North Korea negotiations would inevitably raise questions over management of Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal.
Former National Assembly Defense Committee Chairman Sung Il-jong said he expected dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang to resume soon.
“I think talks between the United States and North Korea will take place shortly,” Sung said. “Judging from the signals, I think President Trump could even go to North Korea within September.”
The lawmakers’ remarks underscored a broader concern that the Coupang dispute can no longer be treated as an isolated commercial or regulatory matter, with trade, technology, investment and security increasingly intertwined in Seoul’s dealings with Washington.
AJP Takeaways
- Coupang dispute becomes Korea-US trade issue: A privacy case that began with a massive data breach and a 624.7 billion won fine has expanded into a bilateral dispute over whether South Korean regulation discriminates against US companies.
- Washington pressure goes beyond Coupang lobbying: Hudson Institute senior fellow Woo Jeong-yeop said US criticism of South Korean digital regulation predates the Coupang case and has bipartisan roots, warning that a Democratic victory in the midterm elections would not necessarily ease tensions.
- Trade, investment and security pressures increasingly overlap: Former Trade Minister Jeong In-kyo said Washington is linking tariffs, digital regulation, South Korea’s $350 billion US investment pledge and security issues, forcing Seoul to respond to what he described as a broader “linkage” strategy.
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