South Korea’s best instant messenger plunges just after outage prompts calls for monopoly probe

South Korea’s best instant messenger plunges just after outage prompts calls for monopoly probe


KakaoTalk and other products and services of Kakao Corp. faced a key outage immediately after a fireplace broke out at a info center in the outskirts of the country’s cash, Seoul (Image Illustration by Thiago Prudencio/SOPA Photos/LightRocket via Getty Pictures)

Sopa Pictures | Lightrocket | Getty Illustrations or photos

Shares of South Korea’s top rated messaging app plunged Monday just after a key facts heart outage more than the weekend disrupted support for additional than 53 million consumers around the world.

The outage was triggered by a hearth at the info middle, which also hosts servers for other main Korean tech providers. KakaoTalk is not only South Korea’s major messaging application, it is also closely relied on for almost everything ranging from on the net payments, gaming and ride hailing as very well as log-in verification for other important web-sites.

Kakao claimed 47.5 million month-to-month lively end users in Korea all through the 2nd quarter. Which is a lot more than 90% South Korea’s population of 51.74 million people today, as of Nov. 1, 2021.

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol explained the effects of Kakao’s outage as “no distinctive from the nationwide conversation community.” He named on appropriate ministries to examine the specific trigger and scope of the disruptions and drum up plans to prevent very similar incidents.

“If there is a monopoly or an oligopoly circumstance the place it manipulates the industry, we need to acquire systemic measures from a nationwide amount for the fascination of the people today,” Yoon explained Monday.

On Monday, shares of Kakao Corp. plunged far more than 9% at the open, whilst world wide web large Naver drop 2% in the early morning session prior to paring losses. Naver also briefly confronted limited disruptions as the knowledge centre also hosts servers for the enterprise, but resumed most of its operations on Sunday.

South Korea's Kakao and Naver shares fall after fire disrupts services

The info center’s operator, SK Inc, also fell far more than 4% at the open. Kakao’s subsidiaries Kakao Fork out, Kakao Bank and Kakao Game titles all plunged extra than 7% in Korea’s morning session.

Kakao at first announced company disruptions Saturday afternoon, which continued into Sunday morning.

“We bow our heads and sincerely apologize to all consumers who are struggling with Kakao service disruptions at the minute,” the firm’s co-CEOs reported in a statement above the weekend.

“We guarantee to take the highest actions to avert problems like these from recurring as very well as investigating the result in of this incident,” they explained, introducing that the corporation has been doing work to back again up knowledge to other amenities inside of the nation as soon as the fire broke out.

“This is a rare circumstance of a person details heart becoming entirely afflicted, so it is getting a lot extended than predicted to apply these [back up] actions,” they reported.

In a Monday early morning tweet, Kakao claimed some providers have resumed, but people ongoing to report concerns.





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