SEOUL, KOREA- Naver, Korea's largest online portal, is under investigation by the Fair Trade Commission, Korea's competition authorities, for anti-competitive practices. This is the second occasion for NHN, the company operating the Naver search engine, to be investigated by the commission since its founding in 1999.
On June 28, Fair Trade Commission chairman Noh Dae-Lae said in a National Assembly economic policy forum, "A platform operator is preventing innovation from occurring in the Internet industry through its dominant market position," indirectly criticizing Naver for its behavior. The commission had practically begun investigation on NHN since mid-May.
According to current fair trading regulations, a market-dominating business is defined as one with a 50-percent share or more in the industry or when top-three players take more than a 75-percent share.
In the first quarter, NHN recorded a sales revenue of 673.58 billion won and an operating profit of 191.09 billion won on a consolidated basis. This is in stark contrast with No. 2 and 3 companies, Daum Communications and SK Communications. Daum Communications had a sales revenue of 124.9 billion won and an operating profit of 22.6 billion won while SK Communications posted 33.1-billion-won sales revenue and 10.4-billion-won operating profit during the same quarter.
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