Japan: "Line Administrative Guidance Was a Request to Strengthen Security"

Regarding the Japanese government's administrative guidance to Line Yahoo to review its capital relationship with Naver, it was announced on the 7th that "the request was for measures such as strengthening safety management and reviewing security governance."

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi stated at a press conference that morning, "I understand that there can be various measures for reviewing security governance, but it is important to recognize that the management of entrusted parties should function appropriately regardless of whether the company is from a specific country."

He also said, "Japan's position remains unchanged in promoting investment from foreign companies, including Korean companies. Korea is, needless to say, an important neighboring country, and the Japanese and Korean governments maintain close dialogue on various fields and issues regularly. We intend to politely explain this matter to the Korean government as necessary." He did not mention the review of the capital relationship with Line Yahoo.

Line is currently the most widely used "national messenger" in Japan. In November last year, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications conducted administrative guidance twice, demanding strengthened cybersecurity after Naver Cloud suffered a cyberattack, resulting in personal information leakage from Line Yahoo, which shared some internal systems. The administrative guidance included demands for management system improvements, including "reviewing the capital relationship with Naver."

Naver and SoftBank each hold 50% of the shares of A Holdings, the major shareholder of Line Yahoo. Following the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications' administrative guidance, SoftBank is negotiating to purchase some of the Line Yahoo shares held by Naver. Japanese media have analyzed that SoftBank intends to buy shares in response to the Japanese government's request. However, the Japanese government insists that it is not forcing Naver to sell its shares.

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