CONSTRUCTION OF PORTAL DATA CENTER

[Anchor Lead]

Korea's largest Internet portal Naver earlier planned to set up its second data center in Yongin city, but it didn't work out faced by protest from the residents who worried about exposure to electromagnetic waves. Naver is now looking for a new site and local governments nationwide are eager to have their regions up for competition.

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Naver was unable to set up a data center in Yongin City due to local protests. This time, the internet giant publicly announced its search for a site beforehand. The company is looking for at least a 100-thousand square meter land that can support power generation of 200 megavolt-amperes. Provincial governments nationwide have quickly begun to do the math and calculate the economic benefits of hosting a Naver data center. So far, six regions in the wider metropolitan area have shown interest, including Suwon and Pocheon cities. Across the country, the count climbs to nearly 20 localities including Chungju and Pohang. Naver's first data center located in Chuncheon, Gangwondo Province employs some 170 workers and pays taxes of several billion won each year. The second data center will be twice the size of the first one. Naver anticipates the center will provide considerable indirect benefits to the region such as attracting high-tech industries.

[Soundbite] KO JEONG-BEOM(NAVER) : "The center is essential to the development of data-based future sectors such as artificial intelligence, autonomous driving and cloud computing."

But the massive power consumption and concerns on electromagnetic waves are lingering tasks to be addressed. Naver will accept letters of intent from local governments by July 23rd, then conduct site appraisals to select the top contender by as early as September.