Naver to Stop Editing News Articles from Third Quarter

Naver announced on May 9 that it would stop editing news articles presented by news outlets from the third quarter of this year and adopt an outlink system so that news articles displayed in Naver, when clicked, would lead to the official websites of the news outlets that produced them.

The largest portal site in South Korea explained that these measures are intended to allow local news organizations to edit the news displayed in the Naver homepage on their own and provide ad revenues and reader data to the companies.

Naver also said that its mobile main screen would not display any news article from the third quarter. It added that it would strengthen its web search functions. “We are planning to beef up AI search, video, UGC and other services so that even more contents can be shown through search,” it said.

Naver is seeking to strengthen its web search competitiveness as an increasing number of users consume video content on YouTube instead of reading text content on portal sites.

According to a report released by market research firm Nielsen Koreanclick last year, 86% of people born in and after 1995 watch videos on YouTube.

As for the introduction of outlink for news articles, Naver said that it would adopt the new system after discussion with individual companies. Many local news outlets have demanded that Naver adopt an outlink system so that users of the portal site can read news articles in their websites, not in Naver.

Regarding its comment service, which has come under the spotlight following the so-called Druking scandal, Naver is going to allow each news outlet to make decisions on whether to allow comments and how to arrange them. In addition, Naver said it would monitor user patterns more closely and strengthen its around-the-clock monitoring of macro attacks.