As the controversy spreads as the Japanese government pressures Naver to transfer control rights to Naver’s global messenger service ‘Line’ to a Japanese company, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced its position that there should be no discriminatory measures against Korean companies .
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official who met with reporters on the 29th said, “The most important thing is to confirm the position of Naver, the party of the company,” regarding the Japanese government’s pressure to liquidate its shares in Naver, the intermediate holding company of Line Yahoo. “The situation is that no action should be taken,” he said.
When asked if he was communicating with the Japanese side on this matter, he replied, “If necessary, we intend to communicate with the Japanese side,” and “In general, we maintain necessary communication between the two countries on general issues that to do with economic.”
Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications previously claimed that Naver Cloud Korea was responsible for leaking about 510,000 pieces of personal information due to the Line hack in November last year and that the governance structure should be changed to solve the problem. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications issued administrative guidelines to Line Yahoo, the company in question, to re-examine its capital relationship with Naver.
In this regard, Japan <교도통신>reported on the 23rd that Japan’s Softbank is negotiating to buy Line Yahoo’s intermediate holding company stake from Naver. Naver and Softbank each invested half to create a holding company, A Holdings, which has a 64.5% stake in Line Yahoo.
In this regard, it is assessed that it is quite unusual for the government of a country to order a private company to change its shares due to hacking. Administrative guidelines are not legally binding, but given the characteristics of Japanese society, which, like Korea, has strong government influence over the private economy, some say that a change in governance structure is not impossible.
Given that Japan has never requested the liquidation of the company’s shares due to personal information leaks, there is an analysis that Japan is using the information leak as an excuse to separate Naver from Line.
In fact, in October last year, there was an incident where 9.82 million user information was leaked from NTT Nishi Japan, a Japanese telecommunications operator. This was a case where personal information was transferred to an external party by a seconded employee belonging to a group affiliate and the company’s system deliverer for 10 years starting in 2013.
Regarding this incident, Japanese prosecutors at the time charged the sent worker, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications issued administrative guidelines in February to prepare measures to prevent this from happening again. This is a very different measure compared to the pressure on Naver, which had 510,000 leaks over two months, to liquidate its shares.
The Japanese government also did not raise issues with the governance structure of Meta, the company in question, about leaking personal information of around 420,000 Facebook users in 2021.
Compared to other cases like this, since the situation is increasing that the Japanese government has issued these administrative guidelines with the intention of expelling Naver de facto, it is indicated that the government should take more active steps rather than confirm the facts or express. his principled position It comes out.
On the 25th, ruling People Power Party lawmaker Yoon Sang-hyun said, “It is an unconvincing and excessive measure for the Japanese government to ask Naver to sell its shares under administrative guidance.” “We need to come to an amicable conclusion through this,” he ordered.
There are media reports on this issue in Japan as well. On the 28th, Japanese public broadcaster NHK said, “Korea’s main conservative newspaper <조선일보>The debate is spreading even within Korea, with an editorial stating that the government’s attempt to break a partnership established through contracts between private companies is an anti-market act and very likely to violate the Korea-Japan Investment Treaty, and that the Japanese government should stop putting undue pressure on him.
▲ Outline Yahoo’s governance structure. Naver and Softbank each invested 50% to establish A Holdings, and A Holdings owns a 64.5% stake in Line Yahoo. Line Yahoo also owns a 34.9% stake in PayPay, a Japanese prepaid payment system, a 51% stake in ZOZO, a Japanese online clothing marketplace platform, and a 45% stake in ASKUL, a specialist e-commerce company in office supplies. ⓒ Preseg (Jaeho Lee)
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