Naver said on March 19 it will stop providing comments beneath articles in its politics and election sections until June 3, the end date of the ninth nationwide simultaneous local elections. During the period, the all-comments collection area will only offer latest-first sorting. As before, only accounts that have completed identity verification can post up to three comments per article. Naver also plans to introduce in April an automated system to close comments on articles with a high share of comments blocked by its AI-based Cleanbot system.

Naver will formally launch its new open community service, Lounge, on Jan. 28. The platform connects topic boards with chat to support real-time interaction without a separate sign-up process. It is positioned as a way to address limits of existing community services and increase time spent on the platform. The service is also aimed at securing real-time, unstructured data to help train and upgrade Naver\'s AgentN AI agent due in the first half of the year.