Portals too are expected to be under control of Media Regulation cloud. Major portals like Naver and Daum are reacting favorable but same time showing concerns over responsibility of possible restitutions, drawing more attention.

On June 29th past, Korean court said part of the newspaper and media regulations it legislated are unconstitutional. The need to address flaws and fill the loopholes in the legislation is greater now.

This in turn made hot discussions between the participants, comprised of mostly college professors and lawyers in ‘newspaper press rights and improvement debate’ forum sponsored by Ministry of Culture & Tourism on the 17th.

Main hot topics of the discussions are; will the new regulation consider internet portals same as one of the press and how the portals will handle those who were victimized by wrongly reported news.

Thus far, portals acted as a media channel without directly being responsible for their reports. Moreover, because of that the latest changes in the legislation will directly affect the compensatory issues for the portals.

A member of open public hearing mediator, J. Yang lawyer said, "When the law that includes portals passes, the portals will be held responsible for correcting their mistakes and to pull it off the public access. It is only right that any victim(s) arising from these mistakes have a right to ask for corrective actions to the media press at the fault."

Portals, in favor of media press compensatory regulation
Portals like Naver and Daum did not show any animosity toward the impending new regulation that gives a right of arbitration to the victim.

Naver expressed that Portals are one of the media mediums but in respect to the victim compensation, they favor the regulation. Any personal damages that arise from a wrongfully reported information should require a corrective action and compensatory system just like that of regular media channels.

Naver’s media service team assistant director Taesuk Yoon said, "Previously, there weren’t any way or system to address victim’s opinion due to the copyrights the media had. If such compensatory regulation does go into effect, we will support it 100 %."

Daum Communication also expressed similar stand on the issue at hand and said it also favors for the regulation that makes the mistakes to be corrected mandatory but now without a concern. It showed a neutral opinion by saying "Nothing has been legislated yet with respect to the media and corrective measures, so we will wait and see."

Even though portals indicated they support the compensatory regulation same time, they are not without a concern to the responsibility of paying compensation for damages.

A member of open public hearing mediator, J. Yang lawyer said, "I agree with having separate claims both to the report producer and to any media channels that are related to carrying the related stories for the victims."

On that note, Naver said, "The victim compensation should be a part of civil law suits and it should not be a concern to the open hearing mediator panel."