Co-CEO of Kakao steps down over service outage

A top executive of South Korea’s largest mobile chat app, Kakao, stepped down on Wednesday over a widespread service outage that triggered an outpouring of complaints in a country that is heavily reliant on such technology.

Namkoong Whon, who became Kakao’s co-CEO in March, said he will resign to focus on his role as the leader of the company’s emergency task force for solving the technical problems exposed by the outage, which was caused by a fire at a data center near Seoul on Saturday.

The fire initially paralyzed most of

Kakao’s services, causing huge disruption in a country where millions of people rely on the apps to chat with friends, wire money, and hail taxis. Critics say the severity of the outage and Kakao’s slow recovery efforts highlighted the company’s poor backup systems and its overreliance on outsourced servers.

Kakao said most of its services were operating normally as of Wednesday morning. SK C&C, which hosts Kakao’s servers at its data center in Pangyo, reportedly resumed providing full levels of electricity to those servers earlier on Wednesday after restoring the damaged systems.

“Because of the data center fire, I feel more miserable than ever and take to heart my grave responsibility. I will step down to demonstrate Kakao’s willingness for renovation and change,” Namkoong said in a news conference.

Kakao’s sole CEO is now Hong Eun-taek. He said the company is investing 460 billion won ($322 million) to build its own data center in the city of Ansan, which it plans to complete within a year. The company also plans to establish another data center in nearby Siheung by 2024.

Co-CEOs of Kakao Corp Namkoong Whon, (left), and Hong Eun-taek, (right), bow their heads during a press conference at Kakao’s office in Pangyo, South Korea, on Oct 19, 2022. A top executive of South Korea’s largest mobile chat app, Kakao, stepped down on Wednesday over a widespread service outage that triggered an outpouring of complaints in a country that is heavily reliant on such technology. (AP)

A solar panel installation sits in Ruicheng County in central China’s Shanxi Province, on Nov 28, 2019. For countries to transition away from fossil fuels and toward cleaner energies like solar power, supply chains for components need to be more geographically diverse, officials said during a conference on solar energy in New Delhi on Oct. 18. (AP)