[Editorial] US has no business telling Korea whether it can arrest Coupang founder

Park Mi-suk (proper), whose son Jang Deok-jun died after working in a single day shifts at a Coupang fulfilment middle, attends a rally outdoors Coupang’s headquarters in Seoul on Feb. 1, 2026, for “victims of Coupang.” Her signal reads “Punish Kim Bom-suk,” referring to the CEO of Coupang Inc., the father or mother firm of Coupang Korea. (Yonhap)

The US authorities has reportedly conveyed to the Korean authorities that it’s going to not activate high-level bilateral safety channels except Seoul ensures that Kim Bom-suk, the founding father of e-commerce big Coupang, won’t be topic to arrest or detention. 
 
Briefly, the US is making follow-up measures relating to agreements reached between the leaders of the 2 nations final yr contingent on Korea’s dealing with of a completely unrelated legal suspect. It is a clear and unacceptable breach of Korea’s judicial sovereignty, one which significantly undermines belief between allies. 
 
Diplomatic sources who’re educated about Korea-US relations informed the Hankyoreh on Wednesday that Washington has been demanding since March that Kim — who goes by Bom Kim within the US — not be topic to a journey ban, arrest, or detention, stating it won’t proceed with high-level consultations on diplomatic and safety issues with the Korean authorities with out assurances of Kim’s immunity from such measures. 
 
Which means that the Korean authorities should promise to not take Kim into custody if it needs to have interaction with the US on follow-up discussions towards the implementation of agreements reached on the bilateral summit in 2025, when Washington granted Seoul approval to construct nuclear-powered submarines and develop its rights to counterpoint uranium and reprocess spent gasoline.
 
Final yr, the police filed an entry alert request for Kim with the Justice Ministry in reference to Coupang’s large information breach, which got here to mild in November.
 
This isn’t the primary time that the US authorities has exerted stress on Korean regulation enforcement over its investigation into Coupang. Strain on South Korea relating to this case is being exerted by way of a broad community of political, governmental and enterprise channels, together with shut Trump allies like Vice President JD Vance, Republican lawmakers, the US Commerce Consultant, and the Chamber of Commerce.
 
That is the place relentless lobbying by Coupang, which has headquarters within the US, has landed us. 

It’s the proper of any sovereign nation to analyze and punish legal acts dedicated inside its personal territory. Coupang additionally faces many allegations, past the huge information breach incident, together with the unlawful dispatch of staff, the creation of worker blacklists, unfair inside transactions, and the improper use of knowledge from companies on its platform.
 
The truth that the US is asking for assurances for the safety of a CEO who’s dealing with legal accusations and going as far as to tie this case with diplomatic points between two nations quantities to nothing greater than blatant blackmail that violates the essential norms and etiquette of worldwide relations.
 
Lest we overlook, the US as soon as arrested Frédéric Pierucci, a former senior government for French energy era firm Alstom, at New York’s JFK airport in 2013 on expenses of conspiring to commit bribery in Indonesia. In that case, the US utilized its home Overseas Corrupt Practices Act to an incident that occurred outdoors US territory to arrest a French businessman.
 
If Kim returns to Korea, he can be investigated by the suitable regulation enforcement authorities of the sovereign state of Korea in accordance with due course of relating to the legal allegations in opposition to Coupang. To deal with him in any other case would fly within the face of widespread sense and justice. 

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