By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
NHN, the operator of Naver (www.naver.com), grew tired of hearing news organizations moan, cry and whine about the country's most popular Web site hogging online news traffic.
So it threw them a bone by deploying dramatic changes to Naver's facade earlier this year, offering direct links to the Web pages of the media outlets, unlike Naver's old news box, which was edited by in-house staff.
A month after the changes, however, NHN still finds itself on the receiving end of complaints, both from linked newspapers and Internet users growing frustrated with Naver's new start page.
The introduction of the direct links, dubbed ``News Cast,'' revealed that the news organizations were generally ill-prepared to handle the increased traffic, despite all their anti-Naver pouting of the past, with some of them scrambling to expand servers after their Web sites crashed.
And some newspapers were exposed as ``whores for clicks,'' loading their Web sites with adult content and lewd advertisements to drive up traffic, and NHN isn't too happy about taking most of the blame from Internet users, who point their fingers back at Naver.
Last week, NHN dispatched letters to each of the 36 news organizations providing their articles to News Cast, demanding them to pay closer attention to concerns over lewd advertisements and the poor security of some Web sites, blamed for the spreading of malicious codes.
The company is also planning to establish an ethics guideline and security guideline for news organizations providing their links to Naver's main page.
NHN had earlier threatened that it would exclude three sports dailies from News Cast ― Ilgan Sports, Sports Seoul and Sports Chosun ― for their heavy adult content and advertisements.
However, the sports dailies have since introduced ``dual page'' systems that block the exposure of such content to readers brought in from Naver.
However, news organizations are balking at NHN's heavy-handed approach, reluctant to block the provocative images and text when advertisers are paying for them.
``You don't like it when someone comes into your house and tells you to change your interior,'' said a Web site manager from one of the newspapers.
``I guess newspapers must deploy more effective self-regulation measures, but it wouldn't be appropriate for NHN to control the process.''
NHN controls around 75 percent of the country's search queries. Despite the mixed reviews for Naver's new start page, traffic remains strong, according to industry figures.
The latest numbers by market research firm Korean Click show that Naver attracted 31.2 million visitors last month, similar to December's 31 million.
thkim@koreatimes.co.kr
