[Correspondent’s column] Coupang’s sport in Washington follows acquainted sample

By Kim Gained-chul, Washington correspondent

Two important symbols of US politics stand on Pennsylvania Avenue, the diagonal avenue that cuts via Washington, DC: the White Home and the US Capitol. E-commerce big Coupang’s Washington workplace is located someplace in between. A powerful ribbon-cutting ceremony for the workplace was held on Dec. 9. 

When the brand new workplace’s location, dimension and services turned public, many individuals questioned why an organization that primarily focuses on the South Korean market would construct such a giant workplace in the course of the US capital. The reply to that query is changing into clearer following Coupang’s huge information breach incident.
 
There’s a sample for Washington affect campaigns. A lawmaker places out an opinion piece in protection of a sure “threatened” group to slam those that are “oppressing” them. Assume tanks publish experiences that bolster stated opinion. New media, versus conventional media, unfold the phrase via on-line articles. The issue is now framed as one which considerations not simply the well-being of a sure group, however of the pursuits and values of the US as a rustic.
 
This was the sample adopted by conservative Christians presumably tied to the Unification Church forward of the primary summit between Lee Jae Myung and Donald Trump, when the spiritual group discovered the partitions closing in round it amid a particular counsel probe into alleged corruption and influence-peddling by Korea’s former first woman. Now, we’re seeing the identical strikes from Coupang. 
 
Rep. Darrell Issa, a member of the Republican Get together and the Home Judiciary Committee, revealed an opinion piece within the right-wing outlet the Every day Caller known as “American Enterprise Calls for a Robust US Response.” Within the piece, Issa claimed that the South Korean authorities was discriminating towards American companies, utilizing Coupang for example.
 
Steve Cortes, a political commentator and stalwart Donald Trump supporter, has additionally railed towards South Korea and its “betrayal” of American firms. Actual America’s Voice, a right-wing streaming and tv channel, has additionally echoed the identical sentiments.
 
Former senior officers additionally seem on this scheme. Very like how Mike Pompeo, who served because the US secretary of state and because the director of the Central Intelligence Company throughout Trump’s first time period, launched a chunk to sentence the investigation into the Unification Church, former White Home nationwide safety adviser Robert O’Brien has additionally determined to talk out towards perceived unfairness. 
 
O’Brien, who at the moment heads the American World Methods consulting agency, primarily speaks on behalf of the US Laptop and Communications Trade Affiliation — which Coupang belongs to — and has lengthy opposed South Korea’s On-line Platform Regulation Act, which goals at regulating tech companies like Coupang. 
 
Typically, supposedly “American companies” like Coupang efficiently handle to bully South Korea by leaning on US energy. The joint reality sheet launched on Nov. 14 delineates points agreed upon in the course of the South Korea-US summit, together with the promise that the US and South Korea “commit to make sure that US firms should not discriminated towards and don’t face pointless obstacles when it comes to legal guidelines and insurance policies regarding digital providers, together with community utilization charges and on-line platform laws.”
 
This transfer seems to scrap one of many provisions regulating monopolies included within the On-line Platform Regulation Act. The act in query goals to stop unfair practices similar to bundling via the designation of sure large-scale platforms. Many US-based firms have campaigned lengthy and arduous for that act to be deserted.
 
Will Washington’s affect marketing campaign save Coupang from the mess it’s at the moment in? Whereas every kind of shops are having a discipline day with the present state of affairs, the Coupang debacle hasn’t been touched upon in official governmental traces of communication between South Korea and the US.
 
Mass information breaches are points that the US doesn’t take evenly, that means that the circumstances are very totally different from when the On-line Platform Regulation Act sought to introduce unprecedented laws.

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