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| Naver's data center in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province. / Courtesy of Naver |
By Baek Byung-yeul
Naver has chosen Sejong City as preferred bidder for its second data center, which will specialize in cloud computing.
The internet company announced late Friday that it selected the city after a comprehensive review, about four months after abandoning its initial plan to establish the data center in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, due to strong opposition from residents there.
"Based on opinions of consultants, the management and employees of the company, we chose the location where Sejong City as preferred bidder, and will discuss the establishment of our data center with the city," Naver said.
If the two reach an agreement, Naver will begin building the center during the first half of 2020. The target completion date is the first quarter of 2022.
Naver, which operates its first data center called GAK in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province, wanted to build another data center in Yongin in a bid to capitalize on the country's fast-growing cloud computing market.
Since its plan was scrapped in June, the company began looking for new bidders in July and shortlisted 10 bidders in September. The company then chose Sejong as preferred bidder after conducting on-site inspections from Oct. 7 to 18.
The company will invest more than 500 billion won in the second data center to use it for high-tech businesses such as fifth-generation (5G) networks, robots, artificial intelligence (AI) and big data.
Located 120 kilometers south of Seoul, Sejong is an administrative city with government organizations, research facilities and state-owned corporations. The city welcomed the announcement, saying the administrative city could expect an economic ripple effect from the center.
"I expressed my gratitude to the 34,000 citizens of Sejong for supporting us during the bidding period," Sejong Mayor Lee Chun-hee said in a statement on Saturday. "We will provide all support to Naver so that the company can establish its data center, which provides infrastructure for the high-tech industry, without any issues."
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