Kakao’s co-chief executive, Whon Namkoong, has resigned after a data center fire incident caused a massive outage over the weekend and disrupted several services in Kakao.
Namkoong, who joined Kakao in 2015, was appointed co-CEO in March. On Wednesday, he said at a news conference that the company will do its best to restore user confidence.
KakaoTalk is the most popular messaging app in South Korea, reaching more than 47 million of the country’s 51.7 million residents every month. The app is also used by government officials, banks, taxi services and payment players.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said on Monday that KakaoTalk is practically a national communications infrastructure. Kakao shares plunged Monday, but recovered slightly after announcing Namkoong’s departure.
Namkoong apologized for the massive outage “for such a long period of time” and said at the conference that he feels “heavy responsibility” for the incident.
Kakao’s slow recovery process was caused by the lack of its own server infrastructure and “high dependence” on the SK C&C data center, which caught fire, Bernstein analysts said in a report this week. Kakao also didn’t have a well-distributed backup system, she added.
(More to follow)