Samsung Electronics on Thursday officially denied a local news report alleging that it forced South Korea’s major portal website operators Naver and Kakao to remove negative news articles about its de-facto chief Lee Jae-yong.
Samsung Electronics said in an official statement sent to Kakao and Naver that it “did not come into any form of (illicit) contact with the two firms” and that “the news report is groundless.”
Earlier this week, the Hankyoreh newspaper reported that Samsung forced the two firms to remove negative news stories about the Samsung Electronics vice chairman from the main page of their news page in May 2015.
The report had cited text messages sent by a Samsung executive to the group’s central Future Strategy Office saying “it has requested the portal websites to remove the articles” on May 15 and that “the morning newspaper articles have completely lost exposure given the requests previously made to the portals” on May 16.
The articles had referred to Lee Jae-yong becoming the new board chairman of the Samsung Life Public Welfare Foundation and the Samsung Foundation of Culture on May 15. The two bodies respectively own a 2.2 percent and 4.7 percent stake in Samsung Life, a unit viewed as strategically crucial to Lee becoming the new chairman of Samsung Group.
In the statement sent Thursday, Samsung Electronics said that the articles in question were “naturally moved down to the bottom of the page under (the portals’ regular news update) procedures” and that the Samsung executive had “exaggerated the situation to take credit for the changes in the news exposure.”
Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong (Yonhap)
Both Naver and Kakao have strongly denied Hankyoreh’s claims, citing plans to take legal action against the newspaper for damaging their reputation and public image.
Naver said that all of the articles related to the Samsung case in question were exposed on the main page for 7 hours and 32 minutes on May 15.
Naver stated that there were only 15 articles related to the Samsung case published on the 16th, compared to 140 articles the previous day. The company said that its automated “news clustering algorithm” that designates top stories by volume processed the Samsung case as outdated on May 16.
Kakao, which operates the Daum portal website, said that the articles related to Lee were exposed on its main page twice, each for 4 hours and 38 minutes and 3 hours and 13 minutes on May 15.
“Daum’s news service prioritizes speed, accuracy and neutrality. Private firms and institutions, including Samsung, cannot exert influence on our news exposure system,” Kakao said.
By Sohn Ji-young (jys@heraldcorp.com)