Labor ministry fines Coupang units 1.96 billion won after safety and labor audits

The labor ministry said Thursday it would fine Coupang affiliates a total of 1.96 billion won ($1.48 million) after a months-long inspection found 206 violations of workplace safety and labor laws, including attempts to conceal industrial accidents.

The Ministry of Employment and Labor said the safety audit covered 105 logistics centers and delivery camps at Coupang, Coupang Fulfillment Services and Coupang Logistics from March 16, and turned up 205 breaches of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Sixty-one cases were referred for criminal investigation and 144 will draw fines averaging about 18 million won per site.

Of the 178 safety violations apart from the concealment and non-reporting cases, 59 were referred to prosecutors, including missing guards on conveyor belts and no protection against forklift collisions. The remaining 119, among them 10 failures to conduct special health examinations and six inadequate rest facilities, carry fines of about 1.78 billion won ($1.34 million). Twenty-five cases of industrial accident reports filed late or not at all drew 170 million won ($128,253) in fines.

The ministry also opened criminal proceedings over the concealment of accidents. In one case, the chief executive at the time ordered that there be no record of a worker's hard work. A former chief executive sent messages saying "make sure no record is left that he worked hard" and "they are part-time workers, they get paid by the hour, not for results," and Coupang staff analyzed CCTV footage to log the time the worker spent drinking water, going to the bathroom, waiting and talking.

When media reported in October 2020 that the worker had died from overwork, Coupang's newsroom published a post calling the coverage a distortion of the facts and arguing that the workload had not been heavy. The worker, at the Daegu center of Coupang Fulfillment Services, had died that month, and the Korea Workers' Compensation and Welfare Service later recognized the death as work-related, citing night shifts and physically demanding duties. During the welfare service's investigation into the family's compensation claim, Coupang first submitted CCTV footage that did not show the worker and produced images identifying him only in a second submission. The case has been sent to prosecutors with a recommendation of no indictment, because the statute of limitations had expired, though the ministry said it would continue investigating further concealment allegations raised during the probe.

The labor-standards audit, which ran from Jan. 16, covered Coupang's head office and seven Coupang Logistics delivery camps. The ministry found no unlawful dispatch of workers, judging that Coupang and Coupang Logistics directed their own employees and handled separate deliveries, and no illegal dismissal through the company's performance improvement program. It did cite Coupang for failing to write the program into its employment rules, a violation that carries a corrective order and a fine. A list of former employees drawn up for hiring reference did not amount to obstructing their employment elsewhere, the ministry said, because it was not shared outside the company, though it told Coupang to guard against a repeat.

"Concealing and failing to report industrial accidents not only blocks proper treatment and compensation but also cuts off the analysis of causes and the identification and correction of risk factors, raising the chance that similar accidents recur," Labor Minister Kim Young-hoon said. He urged Coupang to ensure the violations are not repeated and to recognize the overwork, night shifts and heavy workloads that can accompany fast delivery, and to establish management practices that respect workers' lives and health.

The ministry said it would keep inspecting logistics centers across the industry, as numerous labor-law violations have also been confirmed at warehouses beyond Coupang's, and would draw up guidelines on accident reporting and introduce a system notifying workplaces of compensation approvals by 2027.