Science Ministry tells Kakao to improve service stability after disruptions

A Kakao Friends store in downtown Seoul [YONHAP]

The Science Ministry said Friday it has ordered Kakao, the operator of the country's top mobile messenger KakaoTalk, to rectify its operation system to improve the stability of its service following recent disruptions.

The ministry called on Kakao to submit a plan to improve its network operation system within a month and come up with results within three months.

Kakao was advised to conduct pretests prior to major operations on its network and internal system, upgrade its communications disaster manual, enhance its monitoring system and analyze the causes of the disruptions.

The request came after KakaoTalk experienced service outages three times this month.

On May 13, about 80 percent of KakaoTalk users had trouble sending messages for about six minutes from 1:44 p.m. due to an error with Kakao's data center server.

The messenger also suffered a six-minute outage on May 20 due to an error during an internal system update.

On May 21, KakaoTalk experienced a service outage for about 54 minutes from 8:30 a.m. as the company made an update to another server at its data center without resolving the previous errors, according to the ministry.

"A disruption in digital service should never happen again as it heavily affects the daily lives of people," Science Minister Lee Jong-ho said, urging Kakao to fulfill its responsibility of providing a "stable" service for its users.

Kakao said it will work to improve its internal operation management system to provide better service.

Yonhap