Naver moves to make comment sections more transparent

Naver, Korea’s largest portal site, announced plans on Friday to enhance transparency by disclosing the proportional breakdown of Korean and foreign users in article comment sections.

Naver's headquarters in Seongnam, Gyeonggi [NEWS1]

Naver, Korea’s largest portal site, announced plans on Friday to enhance transparency by disclosing the proportional breakdown of Korean and foreign users in article comment sections.

The revision is one of several reforms the internet company plans to implement to improve the transparency of news comment sections.

Statistics on whether the comment posters are Korean or foreigners will be disclosed “accordingly” without a specific implementation timeline.

In line with the upcoming April 10 parliamentary elections, Naver will promptly delete comments that violate election laws and ban repeat offenders from commenting after a warning. The revision went into effect Friday.

The portal site will also limit the number of comments posted per person for one article to 10 to prevent excessive responses to a specific article. This policy will be implemented on March 28.

Other policies were introduced to facilitate users' requests for corrections. Users who have suffered defamation or other rights violations can request corrections online to simplify the process.

Before, only in-person submissions or written mail were accepted.

Furthermore, Naver will notify users of such information by displaying phrases such as “request for correction in progress” or “correction has been made” next to the headlines.

Both policies are scheduled to be implemented sometime at the end of the month.

BY LEE JAE-LIM [lee.jaelim@joongang.co.kr]