[조형래 칼럼] The road occasion will not be a soccer match between Korea and Japan.

The Gangnam department of Line Pals flagship retailer in Seocho-gu, Seoul on Might 13./Information 1

When the Nice East Japan earthquake struck in 2011, Naver’s Japanese enterprise was at a crossroads. The Japanese analysis venture, which had been within the works for nearly 10 years, was sluggish with no outcomes and met with a catastrophe that devastated the whole nation. It’s mentioned that staff have been full of concern that they’d die when the development of the Japanese department was shaken by flashbacks. In a speech in 2019, founder Lee Hae-jin mentioned, “If we ship our staff again to Korea, will probably be troublesome to restart our Japanese enterprise, and if our staff keep there, it’s inevitable that we’ll be in higher hazard. “I even cried within the workplace due to stress,” he recalled. On this dire scenario, the cell messenger ‘Line’ was born. Due to the earthquake, landline and wi-fi telephones stopped working, however the Web community remained intact, so we developed a messenger service that enables individuals to ship and obtain greetings by way of textual content. Line, which appeared on this method, has develop into a nationwide messenger utilized by greater than 80% of the Japanese individuals, and will probably be registered as the one abroad enlargement of the Korean platform.

However getting cash with Line was an issue on a unique degree. To make a revenue utilizing Line Messenger, you’ll want to embrace a number of extra providers akin to buying, finance, and leisure, however each time you do this, you might be confronted with rules from the Japanese authorities, bumps -invisible barrier solely to international corporations, and Yahoo Japan, the most important portal firm in Japan There was additionally sturdy competitors. In actual fact, the Line division suffered a lack of greater than 500 billion received on gross sales of two.4 trillion received in 2019 as a consequence of sturdy competitors with Yahoo Japan to distribute the fee service ‘Line Pay’ , they usually could not scale back the deficit in 2020 both. .

On this scenario, the break that Naver founder Lee Hae-jin and Yahoo Japan President Masayoshi Son discovered was the mixing of Line and Yahoo Japan. Simply as founder Lee Hae-jin took the danger of diluting his curiosity in 2000 and defeating rival home portal corporations by becoming a member of Hangame, he additionally took the gamble of integration together with his enemy in Japan. Making the most of one another’s strengths, the positions have been divided in such a method that Yahoo used the true administration rights and Naver took accountability for technological growth, together with the operation of the system. The mixing of the 2 corporations was an impetus to beat the troublesome scenario. Within the three years since then, Line Yahoo’s gross sales have elevated by 60%, working revenue has virtually doubled, and Naver’s share worth has exceeded 8 trillion received.

Nonetheless, as Line expanded its market management with Japan’s cell infrastructure, it’s true that voices in Japan need to strengthen knowledge sovereignty and management of digital infrastructure when it comes to financial safety have been on the rise larger. The query is, why is the private info and useful knowledge of its residents left untouched regardless of considerations that South Korea might freely use or misuse it? It’s in the identical context that the European Union is pouring out sturdy regulatory payments towards massive tech corporations in the USA, their greatest ally, to guard their knowledge. Japan’s proper even criticized that “the senior public relations secretary for the Moon Jae-in administration, who was a staunch defender of Japan, was the vp of Naver.” Moreover, continuity Massive and small safety incidents such because the leak of non-public info at Yahoo since 2021 have fueled this pattern. An Web knowledgeable mentioned, “If a safety incident had occurred whereas a Japanese firm was in command of operating the KakaoTalk system, we might have been in much more bother.” He mentioned, “Because the variety of Chinese language e-commerce customers has elevated, the information of our residents has been transferred to China.” too scary to go,” he mentioned.

Though this Line occasion was triggered by the mismanagement of the Japanese authorities to appropriate the capital relationship of Line Yahoo, this challenge is totally totally different from the soccer sport between Korea and Japan, the place our staff should win in any respect prices. The professionals and cons have to be rigorously weighed as a consequence of a number of variables, akin to possession and management of knowledge, which known as the crude oil of the twenty first century, Naver’s future enterprise technique, and knowledge sharing points between Korea, the USA, and Japan. Maybe it will be higher for him to promote Naver Line, which has proven the boundaries of scalability, and make investments closely within the areas of search or cloud AI (synthetic intelligence). There is no such thing as a discover in enterprise. It is only a selection.