By imposing this restriction, dailies such as Chosun Ilbo, Joongang Ilbo, Donga Ilbo, and Hankook Ilbo are trying to regain lost ground in the online news realm from Internet portals. “Up until now, most Internet portals have stockpiled news content in their own database without time restriction, thus using visitors for their business,” explained the head of KONA Han Ki-bong.

Under the agreement, the portals will have to remove any stories more than a week old that are currently in their databases.  In addition, they are also prohibited from using an outbound link system to redirect visitors from a search to the newspapers’ websites.

Internet portals are not accepting the restriction without protest, arguing that the agreement hurts users by forcing them to go to each individual news site.  “…the Internet will regress to more than a decade ago when there was no legitimate search engine.  Internet users will not allow that to happen,” said one official at a Korean Internet portal, who declined identification.

Source: Asia Media through Google