- Kakao’s unexpected outage caused various services from different industries to stop in the country, from banking to online deliveries.
- The company admitted that they weren’t prepared for such an incident and lacked comprehensive backup systems.
- The company plans to compensate the affected users and businesses but it will take time to assess the amount of compensation Kakao will need to pay.
A data center fire in South Korea disrupted the services of major tech companies, including Kakao and Naver, causing them to go offline for hours. The fire broke out in a facility located in Pangyo, where multiple major software companies are located. The facility houses servers of Kakao and Naver, along with some SK Group devices.
Disrupted services nationwide
Malfunctions caused by the fire caused delivery failures and login issues. Kakao, which has more than 50 million users globally, announced that they started working on restoring the service but it took longer than expected. During the incident, no injuries or casualties have been reported.
The company stated that they are planning to compensate users and business partners. The company is also investigating the reason behind the long outage but it will take time to evaluate. The company also admitted that they were not prepared for contingencies and an entire shutdown of a data center had never occurred before. Whon Namkoong, co-Chief Executive Officer of Kakao said,
« We apologize for causing huge inconvenience for such an extended time. We are aware that it will take a great deal of effort over a long period of time to recover lost trust. »