"The Service at the Center of Korean Lives..." Foreign Media's View on the 'Kakao Outage' Incident

WSJ "Most Koreans Use Kakao... Error Fallout Even Bigger"
Bloomberg Focuses on Stock Movement of Kakao and Others That Plummeted on the 17th

KakaoTalk and KakaoTaxi (T) applications displayed on a mobile phone screen. Photo by Yonhap News

[Asia Economy Reporter Hwang Sumi] The recent weekend outage of major Kakao services was also widely reported by foreign media. The focus was mainly on Kakao's influence on Korean society and its recent performance in the stock market.

On the 17th (local time), The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) highlighted the impact of the Kakao service disruption on South Korea, a country living in the ubiquitous era. Ubiquitous refers to a communication environment where users can freely access the network regardless of time and place.

WSJ introduced, "South Korea boasts the fastest internet speeds and the highest smartphone penetration rates in the world," adding, "This shows that relatively large sectors such as telecommunications and commerce have shifted online."

In this context, the connectivity issues in Kakao's major services were seen as affecting the daily lives and work of Koreans. Since Kakao stood at the center of the digital market with about 41 million users, the impact of the service outage over the weekend was inevitably significant.

WSJ also reported that such incidents are relatively common even among global big tech companies. According to WSJ, Facebook experienced a connectivity outage lasting about six hours in October last year. As a result, affiliated services like WhatsApp and Instagram were inaccessible on web and mobile for a while.

In December of the same year, Amazon's cloud service business, Amazon Web Services (AWS), also experienced service errors. WSJ reported that due to the error, several AWS-dependent services, from the largest US cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase to online video streaming services (OTT) like Netflix and Disney+, were unable to provide smooth service.

WSJ explained that temporary errors frequently occur on web-based platforms that connect people and information to provide services. However, WSJ added that there are few services as central to users' lives as South Korea's Kakao.

On the morning of the 17th, stock price graphs of Kakao, KakaoBank, KakaoPay, and KakaoGames displayed on a screen installed at Yonhap Infomax in Jongno-gu, Seoul. Photo by Yonhap News

Bloomberg News focused on Kakao's performance in the Korean stock market on the 17th. According to the Korea Exchange, Kakao closed at 48,350 won, down 5.93% from the previous trading day. During the session, Kakao plunged as much as 9.53% to 46,500 won, the lowest since May 2020, but trimmed the losses.

Subsidiaries KakaoBank and KakaoPay also plunged 5.14% and 4.16%, respectively. As a result, along with Kakao, whose stock price has fallen more than 50% this year, both KakaoBank and KakaoPay set new 52-week lows.

Regarding this, Bloomberg reported, "Kakao's stock price plummeted due to service issues caused by a data center fire last weekend," adding, "The monopoly debate over Kakao, which greatly affects the lives of Koreans, is expected to intensify."

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