Kakao's co-CEO resigns, takes responsibility for the extensive service outage in South Korea

Kakao is currently dealing with the aftermath of the service outage that paralyzed all of the services the company is offering. The incident created extensive business disruptions in South Korea, and the company was also placed in a tight spot as its operations are now being investigated as well.

The effects of the service outage last weekend apparently ran very deep and unexpected. Kakao’s services were cut after a fire broke out at the data center of SK C& C in Pangyo, Seongnam, in Gyeonggi-do province. The tech firm’s servers are housed here, so people were not able to use the KakaoTalk messenger and other Kakao services on Saturday afternoon until the next day.

Some of the services were back after 10 hours, but there are still others that have yet to be fully restored. The company said the service recovery took a long time because the devices used for the distribution of functions of the servers to other places were set up properly.

In any case, with the large-scale chaos caused by the service outage, the chief executive officers of Kakao announced their resignation on Wednesday, Oct. 19. Namkoong Whon, the co-CEO said he is leaving to take responsibility for the incident. He also promised to complete a backup system in two months to make sure the outage would not happen again.

As per The Korea Times, as Namkoong steps down from his chief role, he will now lead Kakao’s disaster response sub-committee. On the other hand, co-CEO Hong Eun Taek will remain in his post so he will be the sole leader of the company now. Hong will also serve as head of Kakao's emergency committee.

"Currently, most of our services have been normalized but we have caused great inconvenience for a lengthy period of time as our response did not meet the expectations of users," he said during a press conference. "I feel heavy-hearted when I think of users and our partners who use Kakao services such as those who had difficulty communicating, drivers who could not receive calls, and business owners who were unable to use our advertising channels.”

Namkoong further said, “I also found that the concerns of the authorities are greater than ever and we will do our best to regain the trust of users."