National Assembly calls for regulations on Naver’s monopoly

Dec 13, 2022, 08:30 am

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Rep. Ahn Cheol-soo of the ruling People Power Party (PPP) delivers a congratulatory speech at the discussion on the ‘system improvement for fair innovation of monopolistic platforms’ held at the Korea Federation of Small and Medium Business in Yeouido, Seoul, on Dec. 12, 2022./ Source: Song Eui-joo

AsiaToday reporter Chun Hyun-bin

Amid growing calls for regulation of Korea’s monopolistic online platforms, such as Naver and Kakao, politicians are visualizing legislative movements. In particular, more and more people recognize that Naver’s monopolistic position is harming the Korean society amid calls for reform.

The discussion on the ‘system improvement for fair innovation of monopolistic platforms’ jointly hosted by Rep. Choi Seung-jae of the ruling People Power Party (PPP), Rep. Oh Ki-hyung of the main opposition Democratic Party (DP), and Rep. Cho Jung-hun of the minor liberal Transition Korea, was held on Monday at the Korea Federation of Small and Medium Business in Seoul. More than 20 members of the National Assembly attended the meeting to point out the problems of monopolistic platforms such as Naver and agreed on the move to reform.

“When I was an executive of the Korea Federation of SMEs, I presented necessary policies for small business owners and those related to portals,” Rep. Choi said. “I thought that new values such as online platforms were also important, but looking at recent events, (Naver) seems to dominate the market or set the standard for all values. If this is the case, I felt that the society can never develop,” he said.

“American is a good example since it splits a monopolistic company into several pieces for competition,” Rep. Ahn Cheol-soo of the PPP said. “If the government misses what it has to do, there will be more monopolies, and platform providers will monopolize every sector.”

“The Fair Trade Commission should have the right to split companies like the United States,” Rep. Ahn said. “Then monopolistic companies will be cautious in the market, and then the laissez-faire market will normalize into a free competition market,” he said. “However, the FTC should be transparent and disclose the full text of every meeting minute.”

◇ “Naver is a mega platform that disrupts the market. Regulations must be implemented at the national level.”

Won Yong-jin, a professor of journalism and broadcasting at Sogang University, who gave a presentation prior to the discussion, defined Naver as a mega platform that disrupts the market and cited structural regulations in the United States as an alternative. Prof. Won said that global big tech firms such as Google and Amazon are also subject to regulations at the national level to prevent monopoly, and emphasized that there must be regulations at the national level to prevent Naver, which has grown with contents created by consumers.

Another presenter Kang Joo-an, JoongAng Ilbo editorialist and former member of the Portal News Partnership Evaluation Committee, said the relationship between portals and the media were ‘abnormal’ due to their connection. He pointed out that the Korean media market has an overwhelmingly high proportion of news consumption on portals, and that the biggest problem is that stimulating and sensational content for traffic sales has become the main news regardless of media outlets.

“Korea’s portal news consumption rate is overwhelmingly high in the world, and the out-link rate is less than 5 percent,” Kang said. “Media outlets should have higher out-link rate to activate their own content, but such attempt is useless because they have been eroded by portals.”

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The speakers and panelists talk at the discussion on the ‘system improvement for fair innovation of monopolistic platforms’ held at the Korea Federation of Small and Medium Business in Yeouido, Seoul, on Dec. 12, 2022./ Source: Song Eui-joo

“Naver said they would activate outlinks in the future, but it is a trick and a kind of fraud, at worst,” said Kang Jeong-soo, former head of the Digital Communication Center at the Blue House Presidential Office, who participated as a discussion panel.

#national assembly #Naver #monopoly