South Korean retail giant Coupang reports a massive data breach.
It's World Business Express from the BBC World Service.
I'm Hannah Mullane.
The latest data from China tells us factories are producing less.
So what does that mean for the world's second largest economy?
And cheap sugar imports are having a big impact on local farmers in South Africa.
We start the programme today in South Korea, where the country's largest online retailer has had a data breach.
Coupang, an online e-commerce platform that sells everything from groceries to electronics, says that 34 million customers could have been impacted.
Its CEO, Park Dae-jin, said sorry for the breach.
I would like to express my sincere apologies to Coupang's customers and the public for any inconvenience this incident may have caused.
Jake Kwon, the BBC's correspondent in Seoul, can explain what happened.
Coupang is really South Korea's Amazon.
This is the number one online retailer here.
And what we had is an unprecedented amount of leak of the customer data.
So what they announced and apologized for is that they have lost about 34 million account data.
These are the names emails, phone numbers, as well as the order history and the shipping address which, for many people, that's their homes and their workplaces.
So they're saying that while the credit card information or the passwords those are not leaked, it has not really given people, the customers, really a sense of comfort, because they're worried that the scammers might use this information to defraud them.
And otherwise.
It's really a very sensitive data that could really depict someone's intimate life detail.
The number of accounts affected by this incident represents more than half of South Korea's population.
That's a massive number.
Do we know anything about who might be behind the breach?
Yes, it really is.
I mean, if you look at the adult population only, that's more than three quarters.
If we're counting those accounts as individuals.
Right.
What we understand, what the police understands is that there is an ex-employee who is a Chinese national who apparently had access to Coupang even after he left the company.
And now he has already left the country.
So the police is looking into him as a possible suspect as well, as there is an authority that's also looking into whether Coupang had taken all the steps to make sure that the customer data are safe.
And this isn't the first data breach that the company has faced, is it?
And it's a series of data breaches that have happened fairly recently among major firms in South Korea.
Yes.
If you're sitting here in Seoul, it really feels like every few days we see a headline of another data breach, another customer or personal info that has been leaked to hackers or simply out of carelessness.
And a lot of people here are quite fed up with it.
And this is why many people and civic groups and politicians are now calling for a tougher penalty against these companies, so that you know whenever there is a breach of personal data, these companies will be fined in a more significant way.
And they're hoping that this will eventually push these companies to prioritize cybersecurity as important as the money they're making from these customers.
The BBC's Jake Kwan in Seoul.
Factories in China have long been an engine of economic growth, so it's rather worrying for leaders in Beijing that a new survey shows activity unexpectedly contracted in November.
It's the eighth straight month that production has shrunk.
Zelina Zheng is the head of Asia Strategy at credit sites in Singapore.
I think the Chinese economy is still running relatively weak and imbalanced within the system.
If you look at the retail sales, I think overall over the past couple of months, it still has been pretty strong.
But when it comes to industrial production, there are still many imbalanced points across different sectors of the system.
I would say the upstream sectors are still under a lot of pressure because of the declining.
It is also a reflection of the weak demand within the system.
I think the midstream and downstream are going a bit better, especially with a lot of the government subsidy programme.
I think going forward, the PMI data and a lot of industrial production data will be under continued pressure.
And there's lots of reports today that domestic demand is falling and that is causing some of these problems for China.
What do you think about that?
I would say domestic demand is imbalanced.
If you compare it with the start of the year, I would say the data overall is better than our very low expectation.
There are still a lot of government subsidy programs, particularly towards the consumption, as well as the social welfare and child care support.
So that is supporting the consumption a bit in the system.
But if you look at some of the discretionary consumption, it's still very weak.
And the whole value chain of categories related to the property system is still under a lot of pressure.
And do you think we'll start to see more subsidy programmes to support domestic demand and to support people spending more?
Or do you think we're far away from that?
We will see some small incremental government support programmes, particularly coming from the local government.
But I don't think the central government is going to push out a blanket nationwide consumption support system.
Zelina Zhang in Singapore.
India's telecoms ministry has asked smartphone makers to preload all new devices with a state-owned cyber security app that can't be deleted.
This government order is expected to antagonise tech companies and privacy advocates.
Apple has previously locked horns with India's telecoms regulator over development of a government anti-spam mobile app.
And smartphone companies will have 60 days to make sure that their phones have the app downloaded on them.
Now.
Today marks the deadline for the second round of bids to buy major American media corporation Warner Brothers.
Rachel Winter is partner and investment manager at Killik & Co and joins me now.
Rachel, what's the significance of this sale?
Well, Warner Brothers, as you say, is a large media company with a lot of really valuable content, like the Harry Potter films and like Friends.
At the moment, it's effectively up for sale.
And we've got three other companies that want to buy it, Comcast, Paramount and Netflix.
So it's quite exciting waiting to find out which one of those companies will be successful.
Today it has transpired that the White House has made some comments about potentially having a problem with Netflix buying the company, because that would give Netflix too much power in the media space.
So we'll just have to wait and see what happens there.
Yeah, and lots of big media names involved in this bidding situation.
Do you think we'll see more mergers in the industry with the market as it is at the moment?
It's quite possible, particularly in these companies that are involved in streaming, because consumers can really only afford to sign up to a small number of streaming services.
And that's why we're seeing so many media companies merging.
Rachel Winter, Partner and Investment Manager at Killik & Co.
Thanks for joining us.
In South Africa, the sale of locally produced sugar has fallen dramatically.
There's been an unprecedented surge in sugar imports almost triple the amount of last year as the price has fallen globally, making it cheaper to buy foreign sugar.
The industry directly employs more than 60000 people in South Africa, and Dr Thomas Funke is the CEO of South African Cane Growers.
Imports have flooded in since January, essentially because the world price has dropped dramatically.
And our import duty that we have in South Africa to protect us from these imports is not sufficient.
Now what that's doing?
It's displacing South African sugar onto this heavily subsidized world market.
And with that, farmers are fearing that their incomes will drop.
And we've already seen a big drop.
And that obviously leads to massive job losses in rural areas.
We are working hand in hand with our government to explain to them the severity of the situation and we hope that we will make good progress in the next few weeks.
Dr Thomas Finke, CEO of South African Cane Growers there.
Now from sugar to cheese.
If you're a big fan of the famous Greek feta cheese, you'll need to follow this one.
Hundreds of thousands of sheep and goats are being culled due to an outbreak of an infectious disease, and it may impact production and exports of feta.
And that brings us to the end of this edition of World Business Express with me, Hannah Mullane.
Thank you so much for listening.
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