SEOUL-- Yonhap News Agency has won a court order to temporarily suspend a decision by the nation's two biggest internet portals that banned Yonhap articles from their news pages for one year.
Under the Friday ruling by the Seoul Central District Court, people can access Yonhap articles through the two internet portals -- Naver and Daum.
The two portals decided on the ban last month in line with a recommendation from the News Partnership Evaluation Committee, a panel of experts established by the portals to determine media firms qualified to provide news stories for them.
The committee cited Yonhap's past record of publishing advertorials in making the recommendation.
The decision, however, was widely considered double punishment because Yonhap was already penalized for the same reason with a 32-day suspension from the portals earlier this year, the longest suspension the committee has ever imposed on a partner news outlet.
The court said Yonhap articles should reappear on the portals' newsstands until the result of a lawsuit between Yonhap and the portals over their contracts comes out.
The court said the contracts between Yonhap and Naver and Kakao have unfair clauses as they allow the portals that have dominant power in the online news industry to scrap partnerships with media firms in any situation without receiving their objection.
"The contracts are likely to be acknowledged as void contracts by the Terms and Conditions Regulation Act," the court noted.
The court also said it considered that the evaluation committee's objectivity and neutrality are in question and that Yonhap was not given a chance to redeem itself.
"Freedom of press and people's right to know are pillars of free democracy, and any restriction on those values should only be allowed under strict rules," the court said, adding that there is strong demand for Yonhap articles ahead of next year's presidential and parliamentary elections.
Yonhap CEO Seong Ghi-hong said the company respects the court's ruling and will work hard to responsibly produce high-quality news content.
Source: Yonhap News Agency