SK C&C "Reported Fire to Kakao Within 4 Minutes"...Tense Standoff

Last weekend, due to a fire at the SK C&C data center, major Kakao services including KakaoTalk were suspended. On the 17th, forensic investigators were moving to conduct an inspection at the SK C&C data center in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province.
Seongnam - Photo by Kang Jin-hyung aymsdream@

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Seung-jin] SK㈜ C&C has released the call records of the data center manager, refuting Kakao's claim that the fire was recognized at 4:03 PM.

On the 21st, SK C&C stated, "At 3:23 PM on the 15th, just 4 minutes after the fire broke out at 3:19 PM, we informed and evacuated client company employees, including those from Kakao, who were at the Pangyo data center site."

According to the call records of the data center manager released by SK C&C on the same day, at 3:35 PM on the 15th, Kakao Enterprise called to inquire about the cause of the server failure, and SK C&C responded that a fire alarm had gone off and was being checked. Subsequently, at 3:37 PM, Kakao also made a call inquiring about the cause of the server failure, and the manager conveyed the fact of the fire alarm.

SK C&C claimed that after the first call, they received an explanation from fire officials that extinguishing with water was unavoidable, and then informed and consulted with client companies about power shutdown.

At 4:40 PM, SK C&C explained that they informed and consulted with Kakao about the unavoidable use of water for fire suppression and the power shutdown. Following this, at 4:42 PM and 4:43 PM, they sequentially conveyed the related facts to Kakao Enterprise and Kakao Pay.

SK C&C explained that the main call contents remain as files due to the automatic recording function of the phone application.

According to materials submitted separately by Kakao and SK C&C to Kim Young-sik, a member of the National Assembly Science, Technology, Broadcasting and Communications Committee from the People Power Party, SK C&C's position is that they informed Kakao of the fire occurrence at 3:33 PM on the 15th, while Kakao claims to have recognized the fire at 4:03 PM on the same day.

There is a 30-minute time gap between the two sides regarding the time Kakao recognized the fire. From this point, the positions of the two companies sharply diverge. SK C&C claims that at 3:33 PM, they called a Kakao official to inform them that a fire had occurred at the data center, initial firefighting was underway, and the fire department had been notified.

However, Kakao refutes this, stating that they only recognized the fire during the process of first contacting SK C&C by phone at 4:03 PM, 30 minutes later. Although Kakao notified users of a service disruption at 3:52 PM, before recognizing the fire, they did not know the cause of the service disruption at that time.

Then, at 4:13 PM, Kakao began service recovery operations using duplicated data and systems. At 4:53 PM, after receiving notification from SK C&C about the power shutdown for water spraying, they started traffic distribution processing through the duplicated data center at 5:02 PM. Kakao argues that if the fire situation had been shared quickly at the outset, additional damage prevention and recovery work could have proceeded more rapidly.

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