South Korea’s largest media organizations are gearing up for a major legal showdown with Naver, the country’s dominant internet platform, over its use of news content to train AI systems, including its HyperCLOVA large language model.
The dispute is fast becoming one of the most consequential copyright battles in South Korea’s booming AI industry, with potential implications for investors and tech companies alike.
Earlier this year, the Korea Broadcasters Association filed suit against Naver and its cloud subsidiary, seeking roughly $418,000 in damages on behalf of three major broadcasters.
Reports indicate that news articles comprise over 13% of Naver’s AI training dataset, which also includes blogs, encyclopedic entries, and linguistic corpora.
Analysts warn that damages could escalate into the hundreds of millions of dollars as additional claims are filed.
The Korea Newspaper Association has also lodged a complaint with the Fair Trade Commission, alleging that Naver leveraged its dominant market position to use news data without authorization for AI services. Naver’s AI offerings, including its search assistant “Q:” and automated briefing tools, reportedly summarize and rephrase news content without consent.
Legal experts note that such practices could affect AI product reliability and raise questions around compliance and IP risk—factors that investors are increasingly weighing when evaluating Korean AI startups and platforms.
South Korean regulators have faced criticism for inconsistent oversight. While the Ministry of SMEs and Startups recently enacted reforms shielding small businesses from liability for using copyrighted data in AI training, the Ministry of Science and ICT, which oversees AI policy, has largely remained hands-off.
By contrast, the U.S., EU, and Japan have established clearer frameworks governing text and data mining. This regulatory ambiguity may impact venture funding, M&A activity, and AI platform valuations in Korea.
Lawmakers warn that without clarity, the dispute could trigger broader industry uncertainty. Representative Choi Soo-jin of the National Assembly’s Science and ICT Committee called for urgent government action, emphasizing the need for “both fair compensation for rights holders and legal certainty for innovators.” Investors monitoring the Korean AI market may see this as a key indicator of policy risk and its potential effect on emerging AI companies’ growth prospects.
For global tech investors, the outcome of these lawsuits could set a precedent for how AI developers in Korea—and potentially worldwide—handle copyrighted news content.
As AI-driven services expand rapidly, intellectual property disputes could become a significant factor in investment strategy, risk assessment, and cross-border AI business models.
