Kakao's co-CEO resigns over massive service disruption

Seoul, Oct 19

A top executive of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions provider Kakao stepped down on Wednesday to take responsibility for the recent disruption of the company's mobile messenger KakaoTalk and other related services.

"As a CEO of Kakao, I feel miserable and strongly responsible for the incident. So I am stepping down from the post," Kakao's co-CEO Namkoong Whon said at a press conference at Kakao's office building in Pangyo, just south of Seoul.

"I would like to give an apology to all users," he said. "I promise Kakao will do its best to restore public confidence." Namkoong said he will work at the company's emergency committee and focus on making up for a deficiency in Kakao.

The announcement came as Kakao services, ranging from KakaoTalk to online banking and ride-hailing services, have resumed complete operation, reports Yonhap news agency.

Kakao will be solely headed by Hong Eun-taek, one of the co-CEOs of the company.

Earlier in the day, SK C&C, which hosts Kakao's data servers, started to fully supply electric power to Kakao's disrupted servers in Pangyo, just south of Seoul, a move that led to the restoration of 100 percent of servers at the data center.

On Saturday, a fire at the data center caused the worst server outage ever for South Korea's dominant messenger and the company's internet portal Daum.

The fire was extinguished after some eight hours, but an immediate power shutdown at the data center caused a server outage in Kakao's services.

Nearly all online services provided from KakaoTalk, Kakao Pay and Kakao T, a transportation service app, suffered a massive malfunction.