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A Coupang delivery truck sits in a lot in Seoul’s Jung District. (Choi Hyeon-su/Hankyoreh)

Over 50 Republican members of the US Congress sent an open letter demanding that Korea stop discriminating against American companies, including Coupang.
 
The Republican Study Committee, a caucus of House Republicans, on Wednesday delivered a letter to Ambassador Kang Kyung-wha, Korea’s envoy to the US, demanding an “immediate end to discriminatory regulatory actions against American businesses operating in South Korea.”
 
In the letter, signed by 54 lawmakers and posted on the committee’s official website, the committee claimed that “many American tech companies have faced a range of regulatory actions that seek to punish them while shielding Korean domestic competition.” 

“The Trump Administration has repeatedly raised concerns on behalf of American companies with the South Korean government and went so far as to include language in the recent US-South Korea trade agreement in which your government agreed to not discriminate against or disadvantage American companies,” the lawmakers wrote. 

“Unfortunately, this commitment has been ignored by the ROK government, which has continued to disadvantage American companies,” the letter continued.
 
Alongside Apple, Google and Meta, the committee specifically named Coupang as one of the American companies victimized by Korea’s “systematic targeting.”
 
Calling those businesses “an important economic bridge between our two countries,” the committee wrote, “For example, Coupang has consistently been the largest source of US foreign direct investment into Korea over the past decade and now sells many billions of dollars in US goods and agricultural products to Korean customers each year.”
 
The committee also claimed that last year’s data leak at Coupang, which compromised personal information for tens of millions of users, was a “low-sensitivity” incident. 

“Unfortunately, the ROK recently leveraged a low-sensitivity data leak in November 2025 as a pretext to launch a whole-of-government assault on Coupang,” the committee wrote in its open letter.
 
“We are committed to ensuring that your government ceases its persecution of Coupang and other American companies operating in South Korea. The stakes for American economic and security interests are enormous,” the signees claimed.
 
In a press release for the letter, Rep. August Pfluger, the head of the Republican Study Committee, stated, “South Korea is a critical ally, and we expect them to hold up their end of the partnership. Discriminatory actions against American companies undermine our economic relationship and risk ceding ground to China.”
 
Meanwhile, the US government and lawmakers are ramping up pressure on the Korean government by linking the issues surrounding Coupang with bilateral negotiations on national security matters. On Tuesday, local media reported that the US has said that it will not continue high-level security talks with Korea unless Seoul guarantees that Kim Bom-suk, also known as Bom Kim, the CEO of Coupang Inc., would not be subject to certain legal measures, including arrest, if he were to return to Korea. 

By Cheon Ho-sung, staff reporter

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