Kakao and Naver Services Disrupted... SK C&C "We Bow Our Heads and Apologize"

On the afternoon of the 15th, firefighters are conducting extinguishing operations at Building A of the SK Pangyo Campus in Sampyeong-dong, Bundang-gu, Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi Province, where a fire broke out. [Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Seungjin Lee] SK Inc. C&C apologized for the service outages of Kakao, Naver, and others caused by the data center fire.

On the 15th, Park Seong-ha, CEO of SK C&C, stated, "I sincerely bow my head and apologize for the inconvenience experienced by many citizens due to the fire at the Pangyo Internet Data Center (IDC) that occurred today."

CEO Park explained, "Immediately after the fire broke out in the afternoon, we focused all efforts on minimizing the damage through rapid response, and we are making every effort to restore the damage under all possible safety measures."

He continued, "We will strive to resolve the inconvenience as soon as possible by normalizing the data center, and we will also concentrate all capabilities to prevent similar accidents from recurring in the future," emphasizing his commitment.

The fire that occurred at the IDC around 3:30 PM was initially extinguished within about two hours. Although the servers storing data were not directly damaged by the fire, the power was cut off, causing the servers to stop operating. As a result, some services of Kakao and Naver, which rent and use the data center, were suspended.

Kakao CEOs Namgung Hoon and Hong Eun-taek bowed their heads and said, "We sincerely apologize to all users who have experienced inconvenience due to service disruptions of Kakao services including KakaoTalk, Daum, Kakao T, and Kakao Pay."

They added, "Kakao is currently working to restore services as quickly as possible, and we promise to thoroughly investigate the cause of this incident and take all possible measures to prevent recurrence."

As of around 6:54 PM that day, Kakao expected that services could be restored within two hours once power was restored, but contrary to expectations, the recovery work was significantly delayed, and services had not been normalized even by 11 PM.

Meanwhile, as nationwide inconvenience continued, the government also responded by establishing a disaster response office. The Ministry of Science and ICT set up the "Broadcasting and Telecommunications Disaster Response Situation Room," led by Hong Jin-bae, Director of the Network Policy Office, to work overnight on recovery efforts together with related agencies such as the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, fire authorities, and operators including SK C&C, Kakao, and Naver.

The Ministry of Science and ICT is currently inspecting wiring on-site together with SK C&C and fire authorities, and if no issues are found, power will be supplied sequentially.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.