Kakao CEO quits, South Korea hits emergency button after dire datacenter blaze
(2022/10/19)
- Reference: 1666162689
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/10/19/kakao_ceo_resigns_datacenter_fire/
- Source link:
One of the CEOs of South Korean super-app Kakao has resigned in the wake of the datacenter fire that disrupted it and other web giants.
Kakao operates messaging, rideshare, e-commerce and many other services in South Korea. Most were unavailable for much of the weekend after a fire at the third party data centre hosting its infrastructure necessitated a shutdown.
Disruption to everyday activities in South Korea was so severe that senior government figures scolded Kakao, the data centre’s operator SK C&C, and Naver, another major online service impacted by the blaze.
[1]
The Register ’s request for comment to SK C&C has gone unanswered and if the company or its parent, the SK Group, has made a public statement about the fire we cannot find it.
[2]
[3]
Kakao has made a [4]statement [PDF] to the Seoul Stock Exchange that reveals co-CEO Whon Namkoong has resigned his position, leaving just Eunt-aek Hong at the helm.
Local media [5]report Whon’s resignation was an act of contrition for the outage, and that he apologised for his failures.
[6]
Hong has [7]also apologised in a post that links to applications for compensation.
The Register ’s request for comment to SK C&C has gone unanswered and if the company or its parent, the SK Group, has made a public statement about the fire we cannot find it. So this may not quite be a moment in which Big Tech is properly contrite about its failings.
[8]Datacenter fire takes out South Korea's top two web giants
[9]SK hynix, Samsung, TSMC granted one-year reprieve from China chip restrictions
[10]South Korea cancels passport of Terraform Lab's Do Kwon
[11]South Korea's homegrown web giant Naver plans global growth push
The incident has also seen South Korea’s government convene an interagency task force to consider cybersecurity and resilience. Some of the agencies involved have said they will hold hearings to probe the outage.
That national level response is an eloquent statement of just how much the fire and subsequent outages impacted everyday life in South Korea, and the resulting shock and disquiet at how such an incident could be so very disruptive.
Kakao has come in for particular criticism because its infrastructure was unhelpfully concentrated in the flammable facility.
[12]
And now the incident has claimed a CEO, a level of response The Register cannot recall following comparable outages elsewhere. [13]OVH’s fire in Strasbourg , for example, destroyed customer data and took many businesses offline for weeks without resulting in an executive’s career being derailed. ®
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[7] https://b.kakao.com/views/kakao/cs_report
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/17/sk_cc_naver_kaako_fire/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/13/sk_hynix_china_chip_reprieve/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/06/south_korea_to_invalidate_passport/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/14/naver_global_expansion/
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Y0-Ku9AWV7RtrCgyQeXZ0AAAABM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/10/ovh_strasbourg_fire/
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Kakao operates messaging, rideshare, e-commerce and many other services in South Korea. Most were unavailable for much of the weekend after a fire at the third party data centre hosting its infrastructure necessitated a shutdown.
Disruption to everyday activities in South Korea was so severe that senior government figures scolded Kakao, the data centre’s operator SK C&C, and Naver, another major online service impacted by the blaze.
[1]
The Register ’s request for comment to SK C&C has gone unanswered and if the company or its parent, the SK Group, has made a public statement about the fire we cannot find it.
[2]
[3]
Kakao has made a [4]statement [PDF] to the Seoul Stock Exchange that reveals co-CEO Whon Namkoong has resigned his position, leaving just Eunt-aek Hong at the helm.
Local media [5]report Whon’s resignation was an act of contrition for the outage, and that he apologised for his failures.
[6]
Hong has [7]also apologised in a post that links to applications for compensation.
The Register ’s request for comment to SK C&C has gone unanswered and if the company or its parent, the SK Group, has made a public statement about the fire we cannot find it. So this may not quite be a moment in which Big Tech is properly contrite about its failings.
[8]Datacenter fire takes out South Korea's top two web giants
[9]SK hynix, Samsung, TSMC granted one-year reprieve from China chip restrictions
[10]South Korea cancels passport of Terraform Lab's Do Kwon
[11]South Korea's homegrown web giant Naver plans global growth push
The incident has also seen South Korea’s government convene an interagency task force to consider cybersecurity and resilience. Some of the agencies involved have said they will hold hearings to probe the outage.
That national level response is an eloquent statement of just how much the fire and subsequent outages impacted everyday life in South Korea, and the resulting shock and disquiet at how such an incident could be so very disruptive.
Kakao has come in for particular criticism because its infrastructure was unhelpfully concentrated in the flammable facility.
[12]
And now the incident has claimed a CEO, a level of response The Register cannot recall following comparable outages elsewhere. [13]OVH’s fire in Strasbourg , for example, destroyed customer data and took many businesses offline for weeks without resulting in an executive’s career being derailed. ®
Get our [14]Tech Resources
[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Y0-Ku9AWV7RtrCgyQeXZ0AAAABM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
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[7] https://b.kakao.com/views/kakao/cs_report
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/17/sk_cc_naver_kaako_fire/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/13/sk_hynix_china_chip_reprieve/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/06/south_korea_to_invalidate_passport/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/14/naver_global_expansion/
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Y0-Ku9AWV7RtrCgyQeXZ0AAAABM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/10/ovh_strasbourg_fire/
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
OVH vs. Kakao
" OVH’s fire in Strasbourg, for example, destroyed customer data and took many businesses offline for weeks without resulting in an executive’s career being derailed."
Sure but the OVH clown CEO is french (as I am), and failure is often spun out, in France, like the whole OVH fiasco, or the whole power cuts we'll soon have, should the thermometer go down a bit, like it's gonna do like every year, in November.
South Korea has, I reckon, a different culture, where people acknowledge their failures and quit.