NHN to revise Naver portal amid monopoly concerns

NHN Corp. said yesterday its portal Naver (www.naver.com) would revise its online news service due to growing criticism about its dominance over news sources. Under the revision, the portal site, Korea’s biggest, would allocate Web pages for media firms to edit their own news for visitors to Naver. When users search news items, each result will have links to the direct source. The news items have thus far been stored in the Naver database. Media groups, in turn, are expected to have an increased number of daily visitors after the adjustment. The Internet firm, established in 1999, said it would complete the revision by late November. The domestic media has constantly complained that portal sites wield “immense journalism authority” by arbitrarily publishing news from media sources they prefer, applying their own editorial standards. Naver News, for instance, has a monthly average of 5 million to 6 million visitors, more than the combined number of visitors to Web pages of the top five local newspapers, including the Chosun Ilbo and the JoongAng Ilbo. Under Korean media law, Internet newspapers are required to have at least two reporters (three if a layout designer is taken into account) producing more than 30 percent of the news published on their Web sites. Accordingly, portal sites are not technically categorized as Internet media. Regarding the projected reduction in user traffic, NHN chief executive Choi Hui-young said in an interview yesterday with the Yonhap News Agency, “Traffic is not a very important factor, but giving bigger value to media groups, our partners, is more crucial. “Traffic may fall but a solid partnership with the media will help us provide a wider range of news information, thus raising satisfaction among our users eventually,” he said. by Seo Ji-eun