{"id":2199221,"date":"2022-10-21T10:11:10","date_gmt":"2022-10-21T10:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nknews.org\/koreapro\/?p=2199221"},"modified":"2023-04-05T16:11:07","modified_gmt":"2023-04-05T07:11:07","slug":"king-kakao-tech-giant-fights-to-keep-its-crown-after-server-outage-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/koreapro.org\/2022\/10\/king-kakao-tech-giant-fights-to-keep-its-crown-after-server-outage-scandal\/","title":{"rendered":"King Kakao: Tech giant fights to keep its crown after server outage scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"
Recent server outages at major conglomerate Kakao Corp. paralyzed South Koreans’ access to a range of services covering everything from instant messaging and banking to transportation, revealing the risks of relying on a single company for so much.<\/span><\/p>\n But despite the huge controversy this has caused, the government as well as competitors will likely still struggle to loosen Kakao\u2019s grip on South Korea.<\/span><\/p>\n On Oct. 15, a fire at the SK C&C data center just south of Seoul took down a number of Kakao\u2019s services for around four days.<\/span><\/p>\n South Korea relies so heavily on Kakao that President Yoon Suk-yeol <\/span>described<\/span><\/a> it as \u201cno different from the national communication network.\u201d While Kakao is a private company, in some sense Yoon isn\u2019t too far off; indeed, the government used its own text emergency alert service to keep the public updated on the Kakao server outages.<\/span><\/p>\n Around 43 million of the country\u2019s 51 million people use the <\/span>KakaoTalk<\/span><\/a> messenger app; 12.9 million and 4.6 million use the company\u2019s financial services, <\/span>KakaoBank and Kakao Pay<\/span><\/a>, respectively; and taxi-hailing app <\/span>Kakao T<\/span><\/a> has 30 million users.<\/span><\/p>\n If you want to know directions, you\u2019re probably going to be using KakaoMap or Naver Map. Google Maps has limited functionality in South Korea due to what the government says are <\/span>national security laws<\/span><\/a> related to data storage.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n KakaoTalk\u2019s login verification is also used for other services, like the country\u2019s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Upbit. The amount of crypto trading activity <\/span>nosedived<\/span><\/a> during the Kakao service outage as a result.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Kako\u2019s stock prices <\/span>plummeted<\/span><\/a> as a result, and businesses that experienced disruptions are <\/span>seeking compensation<\/span><\/a>. The incident even brought down the company’s co-CEO after only a few months on the job. He will now focus on leading an <\/span>emergency task force<\/span><\/a> to solve technical issues that the server outage brought to light.<\/span><\/p>\n In short, the whole thing was a disaster. But it could have been worse.<\/span><\/p>\n If Kakao\u2019s servers went down as a result of, say, a natural disaster or war with North Korea, millions would have faced issues communicating with their families. The government would also have lost a key channel for distributing information.<\/span><\/p>\n