South Korean Internet giants Naver and Kakao together provided the government access to a total of 50 user accounts upon the state's request to wiretap them for investigative purposes during the first half of this year, records revealed by the two companies showed Wednesday.

All Korean companies are currently mandated by law to hand over personal user data, such as chat records and emails, to the government, which can request such information for serious criminal investigations, Kakao said.


Naver said in its biannual transparency report that it complied with 17 such requests during the first half of 2016. During the same period, Kakao complied with 15 such cases for its messenger unit KakaoTalk, while its web portal unit Daum complied in 18 such cases.

In addition, Naver received a total of 3,975 search warrants to read user conversations in the January-June period, of which 3,387 cases were upheld.

KakaoTalk received a total of 2,255 search-and-seizure warrants, of which 1,809 were respected by the company, while Daum received 1,932 such requests, of which 1,295 were upheld, according to Kakao.

Neither company specified the government organizations that made the requests or the identities of those affected, due to security laws.

By Sohn Ji-young (jys@heraldcorp.com)