On October 15, a fire at the data center of Kakao, Korea’s most famous IT company, malfunctioned all Kakao’s services for nearly 10 hours. Kakao’s main service is Kakao Talk, which is a messenger similar to WhatsApp. Kakao Talk’s MAU is 47.03 million, and considering that Korea’s total population is about 50 million, almost everyone who owns a smartphone in Korea uses Kakao Talk. Two days later, there are still Kakao-related words on Twitter’s trends.
The fire made me realize the importance of Kakao in Korea. Kakao has so many affiliates: mobility, maps, games, e-commerce, etc… (134 affiliates!) All of these services had poor access due to the fire for 10 hours. Taxi drivers were unable to receive customers because the Kakao taxi application did not work, and those who borrowed Kakao bicycles and electric scooters were unable to return the device due to errors in the app. Some sites were set up to allow login only through Kakao Talk, so access to the site was not possible. Kakao Talk is just a messenger, and even if the messenger does not work, you may think that it will not be so inconvenient because we have alternative contact tools such as text, phone calls, and social networking services like Instagram. However, many stores receive inquiries only through Kakao Talk and lots of consultations are conducted through Kakao Talk, many people were frustrated by the malfunction of Kakao Talk, a national messenger. Even I couldn’t contact my parents in Korea for a day!
Seeing that one enterprise’s problem has a great impact on the overall society of Korea, I was worried that Korean society may have been “digitally conquered” by Kakao. In fact, you guys even didn’t know what Kakao is or what function it has, but in Korea, you can’t use various apps right away without Kakao. Naver (another IT company in Korea) and Google also have various services that correspond to Kakao. Naver’s messenger Line also released an advertisement in order to target the malfunction of Kakao. However, there is no service that has more users than Kakao. In particular, the most important factor of messenger is the number of users. But since there is no messenger that everyone uses as much as Kakao Talk, everyone has no choice but to use Kakao Talk. What would happen if Kakao is shaken and faced with a crisis? There will be a big crack in various digital services such as messenger, finance, and shopping, which will not only occur digital chaos but also eventually shake the Korean economy, starting to affect stocks.
Before this situation, I just felt comfortable because I can use all Kakao’s services based on Kakao Talk. But is it desirable that the digital world is bound to one company? I don’t think so. Relying on just one digital service is quite dangerous, not only for the malfunction but also for the security. To avoid this kind of problem, I think Korea really needs to reduce the dependence on Kakao.
Reference
About the scale of Kakao Talk: https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/tech/2022/10/129_337968.html
kakao is korea’s second government with how much sk society depends on it, cant imagine the distress people have been in with kakao down. Do you think korea could ever actually stop using kkt and use other services?
I too, felt the huge role big companies like Kakao and Naver played when I lived in South Korea. For example I could not make an online reservation for the hairdresser, because their system was connected to Kakao. After calling they mentioned that I could just make an online reservation next time but that was impossible for me at the time, because I had to verify myself with an ID card from South Korea. As a foreigner I had to wait for my foreigner ID card before I could make an online appointment. For almost every Korean online services/apps you need to verify yourself to buy or make a reservation. Only after getting my ID card I could make use of Korean services. After telling my Korean friends about this problem foreigners faced, they realised that Korea was pretty strict in constantly verifying the person online.
In the Netherlands most people use WhatsApp, but unlike South Korea we also have many other services that we chat on like Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook messenger etc. The dependency on those apps is not integrated in other services that can affect business too like South Korea. The Kakao Talk app is a convenient platform since almost every Korean citizen uses it, but has consequences as seen when the outage happened. Communication can be bridged by using alternatives. Most of the time your messaging app choice is influenced by the people around you. I think these days people are using a lot of other social media apps where they can also communicate on like Instagram. So I think by using multiple apps, you could still stay in touch or keep you business running. Though now it leads to more dependency on more apps, but less dependency on only one. I don’t know which one is better….