Kakao forms damage support council to compensate businesses affected by service disruptions in October

Kakao Corporation announced this week that it would be compensating small businesses that suffered damage due to the nationwide service outage in October. The company said it would be handing out up to KRW50,000, or about $39.50, to small business owners.

Kakao Corporation has formed the “1015 Damage Support Consultative Body” for the sole purpose of providing support services to small businesses that suffered due to the long service disruption caused by a fire at the company’s data center stationed at the SK C&C facility.

As per The Korea Times, the internet company decided to offer up the mentioned amount to business owners to at least make up for the damage they suffered due to the service interruptions that happened on Oct. 15. The company will also give away free emoticons to all of its KakaoTalk messenger users.

The South Korean firm announced its damage compensation plan on Thursday, Dec. 29. It said that this would be carried out in cooperation with the damage support council that it recently established. ,

The council is made up of officials from a lobby group of small business owners, Kakao itself, and civic groups. They will be compensating small companies based on their sales losses caused by the service outage. For those that incurred less than 300,000 sales loss, they will be given KRW30,000 while it will be KRW50,000 for those who lost between KRW300,000 and KRW500,000 in sales.

If there are cases where losses are more than KRW500,000, the council will award them with additional compensation. The officials will determine how much to pay after reviewing the cases. It was added that Kakao would also set up a dedicated customer service center for anything related to damage compensation.

"The council closely analyzed the cases of damage received and went through the process of verifying and discussing individual cases several times with members representing each group," KakaoTalk division head, Song Ji Hye, said in a press release. “In the process of deriving this, interest and support from the government and the National Assembly, including the Ministry of Science and ICT, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, and the Korea Communications Commission, was also very helpful."

Kim Ki Hong, the Small Business Federation’s auditor who is part of the council, further said, “The Kakao 1015 incident served as an opportunity to confirm that a close ecosystem exists between platform companies and small business owners.”