By Cho Jin-seo
Staff Reporter
Major online portal sites are drawing up special pages where information regarding the April 9 general elections can bee seen as parties finish their nominations of candidates.
The two largest portals Naver and Daum said they will open the election service later this month when the candidates for the National Assembly are all set. Smaller competitors such as Yahoo and Paran have already launched their services consisting of news articles, candidate profiles, promotion videos and poll results.
Daum said it is preparing a live broadcast of the ballot counting on the Internet.
``We will provide a package including a variety of information for our users,'' said Lee Seung-jin, Daum's public relations official. ``Four years ago, our election page was mainly an open forum where users could share and discuss their opinions. But this time, we will provide wider and deeper information about candidates on the pages.''
Naver, the No. 1 portal that processes almost 80 percent of all search queries in Korea, said it will operate the official Web site of the election in partnership with the National Election Commission. The firm first worked with the commission during the presidential election late last year.
``It is a national event, and we expect a lot of participations from our users,'' Naver spokesperson Kwak Dae-hyun said. ``We don't get any commission from the NEC. We think that they are providing valuable content for us. It's a win-win relationship.''
Paran was the first portal site to open an election page on March 4. Yahoo Korea followed by launching a map-based candidate information service last week.
Yahoo also allows users to customize their own election pages by region. The company estimates that the election page draws as many as 900,000 daily visits and more than 9,000 postings from users.
Freechal, another minor portal site, is holding a contest for homemade videos about the election. The firm plans to broadcast some of the user-made video clips on local cable TV channels.
indizio@koreatimes.co.kr