Portals spend more money on content

Internet portals are spending more money to acquire quality content. In addition to intense competition for content created by individuals, more commonly referred to as user created content, or UCC, firms are now creating liaisons with larger organizations to gain more stable content from professional sources. NHN Corp., which operates the Internet portal site Naver, signed an agreement yesterday with the Korean Film Council to provide film-related content and free films online. On the movie service section of Naver, the largest portal site in Korea, the Korean Film Council will provide statistics, such as weekly popularity ratings, import-export figures of films, and other information from the council’s film database of Korean and foreign films. NHN also acquires video contents of films that are available as free streaming services. Such films are not commercial films, but mostly short independent films and art films, which were screened at film festivals and provided with the consent of the director or the organizer of the festival during the event. “The Internet is a good platform that can serve to communicate culture contents such as those related with the film industry. Increasing online film-related content will help develop the Korean film industry and make our Internet content more abundant in quantity and quality,” said Choi Hwi-young, chief executive officer of NHN. Etoos, an online education site operated by SK Communications Co., said yesterday that it acquired a 7.1- percent stake in Cheongsol Hagwon, a private education institute that offers lectures and other college admissions-related information. SK Communications operates Cyworld, the biggest community portal, as well as Nate, another major Internet portal. The 5 billion won ($5.3 million) investment allows Etoos to exclusively use Cheongsol’s education contents. Cheongsol runs offline institutes similar to cram schools. by Wohn Dong-hee