SEOUL, Oct 17 — South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said on Monday he ordered officials to come up with follow-up measures after Kakao Corp, the country’s main chat operator, experienced a widespread service outage.
A fire at a suburban data centre south of Seoul damaged servers on Saturday, causing an extensive service outage for Kakao’s chat app and other affiliated services.
Kakao’s messenger app Kakao Talk has more than 47 million active users in South Korea and 53 million globally, the company said in a report in August.
Yoon said Kakao’s services are like a “fundamental national telecommunications network” and added the country’s antitrust watchdog Fair Trade Commission will examine the company’s monopoly issue.
“If the market is distorted in a monopoly or severe oligopoly, to the extent where it serves similar function as national infrastructure, the government should take necessary measures for the sake of the people,” Yoon told reporters. — Reuters
