Choo Mi-ae Raises 'Portal Control' Allegations... Naver Says "Data Aggregation Error"

Photo by Professor Kim Geun-sik, Kyungnam University, Facebook capture

[Asia Economy Reporter Buaeri] Naver apologized and explained regarding the allegations of 'portal control' related to the search results for Minister of Justice Choo Mi-ae in the political sphere, stating that "there was an error in the search results."

Won Seong-jae, the lead responsible for search development at Naver, announced on the official blog on the 21st, "An error was found in the process of aggregating user click data for some search terms including Minister Choo's name, and we urgently started correcting it, completing the work around 12:50 AM on the 20th."

Earlier, Professor Kim Geun-sik of Gyeongnam National University, chairman of the People Power Party's Songpa-byeong district committee, raised suspicions of portal control on the 19th, stating that the 'tab order' appearing at the top when searching for 'Choo Mi-ae' on Naver differs from that of some other politicians, and that automatic conversion results do not appear when searching in English keyboard mode.

Naver explained that the error in the tab order was due to a mistake in aggregating user click data. According to Naver, this was because invisible spaces were included during the process of copying and pasting specific search terms.

For example, in the case of searching for 'Hong Gil-dong,' click data for all search terms such as 'Hong Gil-dong,' '(space or special character) Hong Gil-dong,' and 'Hong Gil-dong (space or special character)' should be summed up, but an error occurred where only the click data for '(space) Hong Gil-dong' was aggregated.

Regarding why the English automatic conversion results did not appear immediately, Lead Won explained that typing 'Choo Mi-ae' on an English keyboard results in 'cnaldo,' which is used to refer to the famous Portuguese soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo.

He added, "In this case, the system asks the user once more whether to search in English as is or in Korean words," and "the keyword 'cnaldo' entered in English keyboard mode for 'Choo Mi-ae' falls under this case."

Furthermore, Lead Won apologized for the error, stating, "We apologize for the part where the error occurred and will thoroughly review it to ensure that it does not happen again in the future."