NHN, the company behind South Korea’s dominant web portal Naver, is set to spend 50 billion won ($45m) to invest in venture start-ups and another 50 billion won to support the work culture of content developers. The company will also invest in educational, marketing, and mentoring programmes to promising local ventures and smaller players to help them generate tangible results.
According to news reports, NHN will make an effort to separate search results and advertisements, block pornographic material and other unfiltered content, and help local content developers expand businesses outside South Korea.
Choi Moon-ki, South Korea’s Science, ICT and Future Planning Minister, recently said that his ministry would encourage NHN to pursue shared growth with other industries and companies, and might even punish NHN should the Fair Trade Commission – which has been investigating NHN over its market position in relation to advertisers and software developers – find that NHN had done anything wrong.