Yahoo said on Friday that it was exiting the South Korean market, citing challenges in the market and stiff competition in the area. Founded in 1997, Yahoo Korea has around 250 employees who will now be looking for work. Localized online portal services will be terminated before the end of the year, with all the corporate assets moved or sold by February 2013.
“Yahoo has faced several challenges in the past couple of years and decided to pull out of the (Korean) business to put more resources on global business and become more powerful and successful,” Yahoo said in a statement regarding the decision.
Later in the statement, the statement claimed that “Yahoo! is committed to Asia. We have a solid business in APAC and see a lot of opportunity for growth across our content properties, communications services and e-commerce sites. We’ll continue to focus on building great experiences for the millions of people across the region who come to Yahoo! every day.”
Not including Google, Yahoo failed to beat local search engine and web portal competitors NHN Corp, Daum Communications, and SK Communications. The move is expected to save the search engine millions of dollars annually after a one-time charge associated with the closure.
