Six Individuals Who Uncovered Manipulation of Naver Search Algorithm Selected as Fairness Persons of the Year

[Asia Economy Reporter Moon Chaeseok] Six employees of the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) who uncovered Naver's manipulation of search algorithms to prioritize its own services were selected as Fair Persons of the Year.

On the 12th, the FTC announced that it had chosen Ha Eunkwang, Lee Yujin, Kim Kyungwon, and Jung Soyoung, officials who investigated Naver's abuse of market dominance case, along with investigator Lee Jungmin (Service Industry Monitoring Division) and official Kim Hyunju (Corporate Group Policy Division), as the "2020 Fair Persons of the Year."

The FTC imposed a fine of 26.7 billion KRW (26.5 billion KRW for the shopping sector and 200 million KRW for the video sector) on Naver for so-called "self-preferencing," where it manipulated search algorithms in the shopping and video fields to prioritize its own services.

In the real estate service market, the FTC detected Naver's so-called "multi-homing blocking" act, where Naver, while contracting with real estate information providers (CPs), prevented them from providing real estate listings supplied to Naver to third parties, thereby obstructing market entry by competing businesses, and imposed a fine of 1.032 billion KRW.

The "Naver case" was the first case addressed since the launch of the "Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Special Task Force" at the end of 2019.

An FTC official explained, "It is significant in that a dominant platform operator was sanctioned for unfairly excluding competing businesses by abusing its market dominance."

Ha, the official in charge of the real estate case, said, "Although it was a difficult case, I feel proud to have achieved a successful conclusion. I am very honored to be selected as a Fair Person of the Year and will continue to strive to establish a fair trade order in the platform industry."

Source=Korea Fair Trade Commission