"Naver's Unilateral Portal Expulsion Unfair"…Court Rules in Favor of Media Company

The court has issued its first ruling stating that it is unfair for internet portal sites to unilaterally expel media outlets.

On the 7th, the Civil Division 11 of the Seoul Western District Court (Presiding Judge Park Tae-il) ruled in favor of the plaintiff in a contract performance claim lawsuit filed by the internet media outlet 'Wikileaks Hanguk' against Naver.

Naver Headquarters. Photo by Jinhyung Kang aymsdream@

Wikileaks Hanguk filed the lawsuit last November, claiming that Naver unfairly terminated the 'Newsstand' partnership contract, causing them disadvantages. Naver Newsstand is a service that moves news information, configured within the same range as the top of the media outlet's website homepage, to the respective media outlet's webpage.

In 2021, Wikileaks Hanguk became a subject of 're-evaluation' by the News Partnership Evaluation Committee (Je-pyeong-wi), an internal review body of Naver and Kakao. Labor.com, an internet newspaper operator, included four articles from Wikileaks Hanguk in the 'self-article list' submitted to conclude a news search contract with Naver. It was alleged that by allowing or tacitly permitting Labor.com to use its articles, Wikileaks Hanguk compromised the objectivity and fairness of internet media. Subsequently, in February last year, Naver notified the media outlet of contract termination, stating that it had 'failed the re-evaluation by Je-pyeong-wi.'

However, Wikileaks Hanguk pointed out that Je-pyeong-wi was effectively just an 'internal body,' allowing Naver to exercise termination rights arbitrarily. They also argued that the termination clause was an unfair term that did not provide media outlets with opportunities to explain, appeal, or object during the re-evaluation process, and that the evaluation criteria were subjective, lacking guarantees of objectivity and neutrality.

In February, before the main lawsuit, the Western District Court accepted Wikileaks Hanguk's provisional injunction request to suspend the effect of contract termination until the main judgment was finalized.

At that time, the court stated, "If the partnership contract with Naver is terminated as an internet newspaper, it could effectively result in expulsion from the public discourse arena, causing damages that are difficult to recover through subsequent monetary compensation." The court sided with the media outlet again in the main ruling issued that day.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.