A glitch exposed parts of Naver Knowledge iN answers that famous politicians, entertainers and athletes had written anonymously in the past on their profile pages, prompting Naver to look into what happened.
According to the information and communications industry and online communities on Feb. 5, Naver carried out an update the previous afternoon to add a new "Knowledge iN" button to profile pages.
The problem was that some past answer histories were linked to certain accounts during the process and were exposed unexpectedly. Online, posts believed to be past answers by Reform Party floor leader Cheon Ha-ram, broadcaster Hong Jin Kyung and mixed martial artist Myung Hyun-man spread. In Cheon's case, a post from his college years drew renewed attention, and answers by Hong and Myung were quickly shared, mainly in communities.
In the industry, the view is that accounts used to register or edit profile information and Knowledge iN content were abnormally connected during the update, causing the exposure. As the controversy grew, Naver restored the related function the same day, and the accounts identified as problematic have now been deleted.
A Naver official said, "An error occurred during a service update, so we have rolled it back," and added, "We are checking the exact cause."