China blocks Korea’s largest portal Naver

Person holding a cellphone with logo of Naver on screen [SHUTTERSTOCK]

Korea’s largest portal Naver has been blocked in China at a tricky time when the United States and its allies are presenting a more united front against Beijing and Beijing is pushing back.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Tuesday that it is looking into the case with other government agencies.

“We are aware of the related reports. [The ministry] is checking the matter jointly with related government agencies,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lim Soo-suk on Tuesday.

A spokesperson at Naver confirmed that its services including mail and search became unavailable Monday.

“Naver has been blocked since 6 p.m. on May 22,” said the spokesperson, although the company has no idea as to why its portal is shut down.

Industry insiders believe the halt is linked to China’s strict censorship rules.

Chinese authorities typically block many Western social media platforms and services, including those of Google, Facebook and Twitter.

Naver's online forum feature called Naver Café and its blogs have been blocked since October 2018, but email and search functions were online until Monday.

Koreans living in China took to different local online forums as they are unable to access the portal, whose market share in the local search engine market surpasses 50 percent.

Daum, the third largest search site after Google, has been blocked since January 2019. All of its services including news, online forums and email were affected.

The suspension follows the Group of 7 (G7) summit, which ran from Friday through Sunday. Wealthy democracies such as the United States, Japan, Germany and the U.K. called on China to do more to stop Russia’s war in Ukraine.

President Yoon Suk Yeol also departed for Hiroshima to have meetings with the leaders in Japan and European countries, although South Korea is not a member of the G7.

The latest alleged censorship is reminiscent of China restricting imports of games and entertainment content made by Korean companies in a retaliatory action against the country’s deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system in 2016.

The restrictions on gaming, however, have recently been lifted to a certain degree.

More than 10 Korean games received regulatory green lights from Chinese authorities with many of them receiving the go-ahead between the end of last year and early this year. The approved games include Nexon Games' console roleplaying game Blue Archive, Nexon's MapleStory H5 and Devsisters' mobile game Cookie Run: Kingdom.

BY PARK EUN-JEE [park.eunjee@joongang.co.kr]