In this blog post, I will revise and edit a previous article—which critically examined the structure and problems of South Korea’s portal services, with a focus on Naver—to bring it up to date.
Naver, which once held an overwhelming share of South Korea’s search market, has long been at the center of the country’s internet ecosystem. In the past, using the internet in South Korea was virtually synonymous with using Naver or Daum. There are probably very few readers of this post who have never signed up for or used the services of Naver or Daum. While I am quite dissatisfied with this reality, I also fully understand why so many users choose Naver. This is because the content Naver provides is vast and appealing, and it is well-suited to the usage habits of South Korean users.
What does it mean for a service to be well-suited to the usage habits of South Korean users? South Korea is recognized as a country that quickly adopts new technologies and services. Before smartphones became widespread, mobile internet was considered the exclusive domain of a select few early adopters, but with the rapid proliferation of smartphones, mobile internet quickly became central to daily life. Since then, South Korea has recorded some of the world’s highest internet penetration and mobile usage rates, and its digital environment has developed rapidly. These changes clearly demonstrate the South Korean market’s tendency to quickly embrace new technologies and services.
Given this preference for fast and convenient services, it is perhaps only natural that users favor Naver. If you have a question, you can find the answer on Knowledge iN, and you can easily search through the countless questions and answers left by past users. The news service allows you to view articles from various media outlets in one place, and you can conveniently search by category, such as shopping, finance, and music. It also offers a wide range of content services and numerous features, including email, maps, and webtoons. It’s nearly impossible to list all the services Naver provides, and users can quickly find the information they need without having to visit multiple sites themselves. This convenience is undoubtedly a major advantage.
However, as I mentioned earlier, I have many grievances regarding this phenomenon. Naver has certainly provided users with a great deal of convenience, and compared to the past, access to information on the internet has also improved significantly. But it’s hard to say that these changes have brought about only positive results. From my perspective, the current Naver is more like a “monster” that has become excessively bloated, unable to withstand its rapid growth.
Before discussing the negative aspects of today’s Naver, it is necessary to first examine the process and background of its growth. Many people will remember Hanmail. It would be no exaggeration to say that most people who were relatively early adopters of the internet and email used Hanmail at the time. Later, as Daum grew based on this foundation, competition in South Korea’s search service market began in earnest. At the time, overseas search engines like Yahoo and Lycos dominated the market, but Daum achieved great success by spearheading a new community service called “Daum Cafe.”
It was around the time Daum had overtaken Yahoo to establish itself as South Korea’s largest search engine that Naver made its debut. Launched in 1999, Naver was not a particularly distinctive search engine in its early days. However, the “Knowledge iN” service, released in 2002, garnered an explosive response, enabling Naver to surpass Daum’s market share in just one year and grow into South Korea’s leading search engine.
Knowledge iN was a highly innovative service for its time. Traditional web search relied on users finding the information they needed among the data posted online by content providers. In contrast, Knowledge iN operated on a structure where users posted questions, other users knowledgeable in the relevant field provided answers, and those questions and answers were subsequently reused by people with similar inquiries. Since questions and answers accumulated continuously over time, the volume of information grew rapidly.
In addition, as Naver began offering various services such as webtoons and news, it gradually expanded its business scope and has since established itself as one of South Korea’s leading portals with the largest user base. However, can a search engine truly be considered excellent based solely on its high market share? To put it simply, I don’t think so.
What is the biggest difference between PC communications and the Internet? In the PC communications era, networks were limited to simply connecting one PC to another. While PC communications involved users connected to a single telecommunications company’s server exchanging files and messages with one another, the Internet is an environment where people around the world can share information without restrictions through a single, vast network. In other words, if PC communications was a limited and closed small-scale community, the Internet can be described as a massive information network connecting the entire world.
However, the Internet did not look the way it does today from the very beginning. Although anyone could access it from anywhere in the world as long as they knew the web address, the early Internet lacked effective means of finding specific information, so it was common for people to gather on specific sites to share information. It was only with the advent of search engines that users could easily find the information they wanted on the vast web, and information sharing began to expand on a global scale. These changes shaped the Internet as we know it today.
But what about Naver today? When you search on Naver, a significant portion of the search results consists of content produced internally by Naver. Although search results from external sites are provided, they are relatively limited, and they often do not rank highly in the search results. This structure can be seen as somewhat at odds with the openness that the internet strives for.
The problem doesn’t end there. The quality of the information exposed through search is also a major issue. For some time, whenever users searched for popular search terms or trending keywords, they repeatedly encountered a flood of blog posts with identical or very similar titles. Many of these posts merely copied the content of news articles or repackaged existing content, and a significant number were written solely to boost visitor numbers and generate ad revenue. As this type of content proliferates, it becomes increasingly difficult for users to find the original source of information or a reliable source text.
This is precisely the point I wish to highlight. Even when searching for specific information, it was not uncommon for blog or online community posts—which had merely repurposed or copied the content—to appear higher in search results than the original source. This can result in a failure to adequately respect the efforts of information producers and the value of the information itself. Conversely, if a post that simply copies content appears higher in search results than a useful resource someone spent a long time crafting, anyone would feel a sense of frustration. This phenomenon, combined with the closed nature of search services, can have a negative impact on the information ecosystem.
Knowledge iN also faced similar issues. Answers written long ago often still appeared at the top of search results, and with the same questions being repeated or similar answers continuously accumulating, there were many cases where it was difficult to determine which information to trust. The system, in which the accepted answer is determined primarily by user ratings, was not necessarily a standard that guaranteed the accuracy of the information.
Excessive advertising is another problem. Naver sells advertising products for specific search terms, allowing advertisers to have their sites displayed at the top of search results in exchange for payment. While the system has evolved from the past “Power Link”-centric structure to various forms of search advertising, the fact that ads are prioritized at the top of search results has not changed significantly. When searching for highly commercial keywords such as travel, finance, or shopping, ads often appear first, and reviews posted on blogs or online communities may also include content written for advertising or sponsorship purposes. Users who are not accustomed to using online information may struggle to clearly distinguish between ads and regular search results, making it difficult for them to find the information they are looking for.
So, despite these drawbacks, why do so many people prefer Naver over other search engines? If you try using other search engines, you’ll quickly realize that Naver still offers the most comprehensive information related to South Korea. This, in turn, ties back to Naver’s closed ecosystem. A very high proportion of the content produced on Naver is generated within its own platform, and this vast amount of content is difficult for competing search engines to utilize to the same extent. Consequently, its strength as the platform with the largest user base and the most content has a significant impact on the growth of its competitors. This could be seen as somewhat at odds with the fundamental spirit of the internet, which holds that information should be freely shared.
Of course, if we view Naver as a business, this approach is, to some extent, a natural choice. It is not easy to generate sufficient revenue solely by operating a search service. Ultimately, advertising became the core revenue model, and search engines began offering numerous services—such as news, shopping, webtoons, online communities, blogs, finance, and videos—in addition to search functions, in an effort to keep users on their platforms for as long as possible. Over time, search became just one feature, and the entire portal service evolved to keep users within the platform. Today’s Naver can also be viewed as a platform designed to enable users to carry out as many activities as possible within Naver itself.
You may have heard the term “Galápagos syndrome.” Just as the Galápagos Islands in the South Pacific formed a unique ecosystem after being isolated from the outside world for a long time, this term refers to the phenomenon where a specific country or market develops in a direction distinct from the rest of the world. In the past, the Japanese mobile phone market was often cited as a prime example; it was criticized for losing its competitiveness in the global market by developing in a direction that diverged from international standards.
At one time, South Korea’s internet environment also exhibited similar characteristics. With ActiveX-based services and a web environment centered on Internet Explorer persisting for a long time, it developed in a direction different from international web standards. However, it is difficult to attribute this phenomenon entirely to Naver. This is because a complex interplay of factors—including security policies in the financial sector and public institutions, government regulations, the web development environment, and user habits—was at play at the time. While Naver was one of the leading internet companies that grew within this environment, it is difficult to view it as the sole entity responsible for creating it.
I do not believe that ordinary users lack the right to demand ethical or fair policies from Naver. On the contrary, it could be argued that Naver was able to grow into the massive platform it is today thanks to the content and participation generated by countless users. Blog posts, Cafe entries, and the questions and answers on Knowledge iN—all this vast amount of information is the result of user contributions.
Of course, Naver is both a search engine and a for-profit company. Therefore, we cannot criticize the act of generating revenue in and of itself. What is important is that users also accurately understand this structure. Users need to recognize that search results do not always represent the most objective or valuable information, and that they can be influenced by a combination of advertising, algorithms, and platform policies. Rather than relying solely on immediate convenience, it is far more important to verify information from various sources and adopt a critical mindset when evaluating it.
our dropdown trigger to search shortcuts.
