Beyond Employment Obstruction, Into a Dispute Over Public-Interest Whistleblowing... Coupang "Blacklist" Controversy Rekindles

Labor Ministry: "No obstruction of employment at other companies found"
Investigation findings released after two years and eight months
Whistleblower who reported leak of internal materials referred to prosecutors
People's Solidarity for Partici

Controversy over allegations that Coupang compiled and used a so-called “blacklist” of former employees to prevent them from being rehired and from finding other work has flared up again after the government announced that its investigation had found no violations of law. Some argue that the public interest served by the initial disclosure should also be reassessed, given that no illegal conduct was established. Meanwhile, civic groups including People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD) have protested the referral of the former employee who disclosed the allegations to prosecutors, calling it “persecution of a public-interest whistleblower.” The controversy over the blacklist, which began in 2024, is now shifting—two years and eight months later—from whether it illegally obstructed employment to a dispute over the legitimacy of the public-interest disclosure.

List of 16,450 names disclosed... Labor Ministry says no evidence of interference with employment at other companies

According to industry sources on October 23, the Ministry of Employment and Labor announced the previous day the results of its labor inspection of Coupang, Coupang Fulfillment Services (CFS) and Coupang Logistics Services (CLS), saying it had found no violations of the Labor Standards Act in connection with allegations that a blacklist had been compiled and managed.

The ministry confirmed that Coupang had compiled a list of some former employees, called the “List of Candidates for Careful Consideration,” and used it as a reference when hiring. However, it said it found no evidence that the list had been shared externally to prevent people from getting jobs at other companies.

Coupang headquarters. Yonhap News Agency.

Article 40 of the Labor Standards Act prohibits compiling or using a list for the purpose of obstructing a worker’s employment. After consulting experts, the ministry concluded that it would be difficult to punish a company under this provision for using relevant information solely in its own hiring process. It said, however, that it would guide companies to strengthen hiring fairness and protect applicants’ rights to prevent similar issues from arising in the future.

The controversy began in February 2024, when Mr. Kim, a former member of the human resources team at CFS, Coupang’s logistics subsidiary, informed the media of the existence of an internal list. The allegation was that CFS had kept records for about six years, starting in September 2017, on 16,450 people, including logistics center workers, with their real names, contact information and reasons for being barred from employment. The controversy grew after reports emerged that the list included not only people who had violated company rules but also journalists who had critically reported on Coupang’s working conditions. At the time, Coupang said the records were a legitimate human resources management tool intended to protect other employees from people who had caused problems such as theft, sexual harassment and assault.

The conclusion that Coupang’s blacklist had “never been used to obstruct employment” is similar to a decision made by the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC) in May 2025. At the time, Mr. Kim asked the ACRC for protective measures, concerned that Coupang might file a police complaint and bring a civil lawsuit against him for making a public-interest disclosure. The ACRC rejected his request. The commission’s position was that it was unclear whether the list had been compiled to obstruct employment and that no specific instances of actual employment obstruction had been presented. In other words, it would be difficult to protect the disclosure under the public-interest whistleblower framework because no unlawful conduct had been legally established.

Civic groups protest referral of whistleblower to prosecutors... “Public interest must be considered”

Attention is also turning to how the police investigation into the original whistleblower will proceed following the Labor Ministry’s announcement. On October 21, the Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency referred Mr. Kim and another former employee, identified as A, to the Suwon District Prosecutors’ Office without detention on suspicion of violating the Information and Communications Network Act. Mr. Kim is suspected of using A’s account to gain unauthorized access to the company’s internal system after leaving the company and obtain related materials.

In January 2025, CFS apologized at a National Assembly hearing for collecting personal information too broadly and dropped its complaint against the whistleblower. However, the investigation continued because intrusion into an information and communications network can be punished regardless of the victim’s wishes. The police concluded that the allegations of breach of trust in business affairs and disclosure of trade secrets, initially raised by Coupang, were not substantiated.

Some have said, “A public-interest disclosure is an act of bringing allegations of illegality and misconduct by large corporations and others to public attention in order to address them. But if the government’s investigation ultimately finds no legal violations, we need to consider whether the act actually served the public interest.” Labor groups and civic organizations, on the other hand, argue that “the legality of the conduct disclosed and the public interest served by the disclosure must be considered separately.”

In a statement on October 22, PSPD criticized the referral, saying, “The investigative authorities, which have a duty to protect public-interest whistleblowers, are contributing to pressure and persecution against the whistleblower by referring the case to prosecutors.” It also urged the prosecution office that received the case to “consider the circumstances that led to the disclosure and the purpose of the public-interest whistleblower protection system, and decide not to prosecute.”

However, the Labor Ministry’s decision concerns only whether the blacklist violated the Labor Standards Act’s prohibition on obstructing employment. It does not resolve the legal questions surrounding the collection and management of personal information during the list’s compilation or the whistleblower’s acquisition of the materials. A separate investigation is also underway into complaints filed by civic groups and others against CFS officials on suspicion of violating the Labor Standards Act and the Personal Information Protection Act, among other charges.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.