Tag: Kakao

This is an interesting to see how both CEOs perform leading two of Korea’s biggest IT brands:

Naver CEO Choi Soo-yeon, left, and Kakao CEO nominee Chung Shin-a / Courtesy of each company

Naver and Kakao, Korea’s two major internet companies, are in a female leadership contest after the latter recently nominated Chung Shin-a, chief of the group’s venture capital unit, as CEO, according to industry officials and experts.

Naver, operator of Korea’s most used internet portal service, and Kakao, which owns the most popular mobile chat app KakaoTalk, are both to be run by female CEOs.

Of note, is how these two CEOs will lead the internet giants in the AI era, they said.

The appointment of women as CEOs in a rapidly changing IT industry is explained by their expertise in the sector, they said. Also, by appointing women as new leaders, the companies can expect to refresh their image.

“What is expected from female CEOs is not only their expertise but that they can scrutinize the business more thoroughly as women,” Kim Dae-jong, a professor of business administration at Sejong University, said.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

It is amazing the consternation the loss of Kakao services for about two days has caused in South Korea and now the government is ready to step in and regulate them to prevent another “digital platform disaster”:

The ruling and main opposition parties lashed out at tech giant Kakao Corp. on Monday, branding a massive service disruption that occurred over the weekend as a “digital platform disaster” and summoning its founder to a parliamentary audit.

On Saturday afternoon, a fire started at a SK C&C building that houses the data center that Kakao uses, prompting a power outage that disrupted the company’s namesake messaging service KakaoTalk, as well as ride-hailing and public services tied to the app that more than 40 million use. 

The blaze also affected Naver, the country’s top internal portal, which uses the same data center.

“The point of this crisis was that the business did not have appropriate backup systems in order to cut costs,” Rep. Park Hong-geun, floor leader of the main opposition Democratic Party (DP), said, accusing Kakao of failing to “think about responsibilities while maintaining the market dominant position.”

“Considering that digital services provided by the private sector have deeply permeated into the people’s lives, we can no longer leave things to individual companies,” he said. “We will swiftly provide legislative measures so that we will not again become helpless against such digital platform disasters.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

You would think major companies like Kakao and Naver would have a more robust back up server capabilities to have resiliency against unexpected incidents like this:

KaKao, the operator of Korea’s dominant messaging app Kakao Talk, has restored 40 percent of its data center’s servers, an executive said Sunday, as it is working to fully repair its services disrupted by a fire.

The tech giant has restored 12,000 servers out of 32,000 at its data center in the SK CC building located in Pangyo, just south of Seoul, said Yang Hyun-seo, Kakao’s vice president handling the company’s relationship with the government.

“It is hard to tell exactly how long it will take before Kakao Talk and other services can be fully restored,” she said at the site, citing a massive server loss.

Kakao has servers in Pangyo and Anyang, both in Gyeonggi Province that surrounds Seoul, as part of its risk management policy, but the fire, which has been extinguished, was unexpected, according to Kakao.

The fire broke out Saturday in the SK CC building, which houses the data centers of Kakao and the country’s leading search engine Naver, a rare accident that disrupted both tech giants’ services.

President Yoon Suk-yeol instructed officials to make efforts to ensure Kakao can quickly resume its services as he called on the company to find out the exact cause of the fire and come up with measures to avoid future disruptions of services.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but the Yoon administration jumping into this makes it seem like it is a national emergency. I think people can survive a day or two without a social media site and search engine service.

I always figured a chaebol family figure would lead this ranking, but it ends up being a self made tech entrepreneur instead:

The self-made founder of Kakao has become the country’s richest person, backed by stock gains this year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Bloomberg reported that Kakao Chairman Kim Beom-su, 55, has a net worth of $13.4 billion (15.4 trillion won), which places him at the top of Korea’s wealth rankings. Following him is Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong, with a net worth of $12.1 billion.

Kim’s assets ballooned by more than $6 billion this year as Kakao’s share price surged 91 percent from early January. The tech company’s stock gains were fueled by scheduled listings of multiple affiliates this year, including internet-based lender Kakao Bank, which will make its local stock market debut next month.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

So much for the free market deciding winners and losers. This decision would be like the DVD rental industry complaining about online streaming services and the government only allowing them to stream at certain times:

The government, Kakao’s mobile transportation service affiliate and the taxi industry clinched a breakthrough agreement on Thursday to allow Kakao Mobility’s carpool service to operate at limited times. 

The successful conclusion of the three-way discussions ends months of bitter disputes that led to the suspension of a beta service and immolations by three taxi drivers, two of whom died as a result.  

Kakao’s new service will be available only during weekday commuting hours between 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. It will not operate on weekends or public holidays. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but judging by the above picture the Kakao Mobility CEO Jung Joo-hwan does not look happy about this agreement. I fully expect this fight between Kakao and the taxi driver union will come up again in the future.

Oh, by the way since I brought up the DVD industry, there is now only one Blockbuster left on Earth.

Kakao Friends store in Seoul.

Kakao is now in the cross hairs of the Korean government:

KakaoTalk, South Korea’s most-used messenger app, has once again become the center of national attention, stirring up controversy over its announcement that it would not accede to laws allowing authorities to inspect its user data.

The issue over the platform’s privacy policy has split the nation, with some people posting online comments that its new security measures have been long overdue, while others accused it of arrogance and believing that it can operate above the law.

The legal community, however, seemed to be adamant that Daum Kakao’s outright defiance of the law would simply be illegal, and that it would face charges for obstruction of justice.

Although legal sources said that no company executives had been sent to jail for not immediately responding to prosecutors’ warrants, they had faced mounting charges as no prosecutors had shown to walk away that easily from any case or investigation.  [Korea Herald]

You can read more at the link, but Kakao has been losing users to foreign companies because of the fear the government will be accessing user data.  Kakao probably thinks they have to take this tough stand to defy warrants in order to try and keep the users they currently have even if it means violating Korean law.  ROK Heads may remember that this whole issue began because the Park administration has started to crackdown on online rumors.  So to find out who is passing false rumors the government wants to access Kakao data of those passing them around.