Naver suffered a system error while revamping its people profile service, leading to an incident in which past KnowledgeiN answers by well-known figures such as politicians, entertainers and athletes were made public.

According to the industry on Feb. 5, Naver added a function on the previous afternoon to link KnowledgeiN content to people profiles. The update was intended to let users see a person’s KnowledgeiN activity when looking up that person’s information.

An unexpected error occurred in the process. An internal account Naver used to manage people information was incorrectly linked to KnowledgeiN service content, exposing answers that public figures had previously written anonymously.

Cheon Ha-ram (천하람), floor leader of the Reform New Party, drew attention after a post was made public showing that, while in college in July 2004, he answered a question titled “Is gender discrimination severe at Korea University?” with remarks to the effect that it was “a bit absurd” and that male Korea University students were not all sexually frustrated perverts.

An answer by broadcaster Hong Jin-kyung (홍진경), posted a year ago to a question asking “How to stop growing taller,” was also exposed, in which she recommended a specific hospital and medical staff. Mixed martial arts fighter Myung Hyun-man (명현만) was also confirmed to have left an answer to a question, “If Myung Hyun-man goes to the UFC, can he get 1 win?” in which he assessed himself as saying his striking was quite good but his ground game was not, making it difficult.

After the content spread through online communities, Naver rolled back the function it had added that day. It also deleted the account involved.

A Naver official said, “An error occurred during a service update and it is currently in a rolled-back state.” The official added, “We are checking the exact circumstances.”