[Column] Naver's Journey Between Hell and Heaven Amid the 'DeepSeek Shock'

On the morning of the 3rd, after the long Lunar New Year holiday, the National Assembly's Science, Technology, Information and Broadcasting and Communications Committee (STIBC) would have adopted a hearing plan to summon Choi Soo-yeon, CEO of Naver, as a witness, as originally planned. A summons from the National Assembly is burdensome and nerve-wracking for a company. In fact, a summons for the CEO inevitably causes a work disruption throughout the entire company.

The hearing that the STIBC intended to hold was promoted with the purpose of responding to the spread of online misinformation related to the emergency martial law incident on December 3rd. The opposition party raised suspicions of collusion in comment manipulation against Naver, citing that the article comment service was different from usual for about 20 minutes starting at 10:40 PM on the day of the martial law. At that time, Naver limited the display of article comments to a maximum of 20 and restricted new comment registrations due to a surge in traffic. Around the same time, access errors also occurred on Naver Cafe, an online community.

The National Assembly originally planned to adopt the hearing plan to summon CEO Choi as a witness at the STIBC plenary meeting on the 22nd of last month but postponed it to the 3rd of this month. However, with the plenary meeting postponed again, the hearing itself is effectively canceled. After postponing the plenary meeting twice, no further schedule has been set. A STIBC official said, "Usually, when a schedule is postponed, the next date is mentioned together, but this hearing has no discussed rescheduled date, so it seems indefinite," adding, "There will be no need to summon business leaders for the time being." The hearing, which had kept Naver on edge for two weeks, has effectively fizzled out, allowing Naver to finally breathe a sigh of relief.

The background behind the cancellation of the hearing is interpreted as involving political calculations. Recently, the political sphere has seen the spread of controversy over 'KakaoTalk censorship.' In this situation, demanding the attendance of the Naver CEO at the National Assembly could cause unnecessary public misunderstanding. After the opposition leader called the emergence of DeepSeek a critical turning point in AI development competition and requested an additional budget of 20 trillion won including support for AI development, summoning the head of the country's largest IT company to question the martial law comment manipulation incident would appear embarrassing to the public. This judgment likely contributed to the hearing being shelved.

Amid the impeachment crisis and the upcoming early presidential election, portals like Naver and Daum are already anxious that their news, comments, and community operations might provoke unnecessary political misunderstandings. If even the National Assembly stokes such corporate anxieties, domestic AI companies will not be able to build competitiveness in the global market. No matter how much the ruling and opposition parties pass tens of trillions of won in budgets to foster the AI industry, companies will struggle to perform well if caught up in political strife. While political circles in other countries are advancing regulatory policies to protect their domestic companies beyond AI industry promotion measures, Korea seems to be going in the opposite direction. It is time for the National Assembly, which must undergo significant political changes this year, to reflect on the fact that the 20 minutes without comments on the day of martial law cannot be more important than the 20 years that AI will influence going forward.