A fire at SK C&C’s Pangyo data center on October 15, 2022, disrupted Kakao services including KakaoTalk. Kakao co-CEO Namkoong Whon—not the data center operator’s CEO—resigned four days later, saying he felt responsible. Kakao later attributed the prolonged recovery in part to systems for moving services between data centers that did not work as intended, despite data being distributed across sites.
What happened at the Pangyo data center?
At about 15:19 on October 15, 2022, a fire began in the battery room on floor B3 of SK C&C’s Pangyo data center. The Republic of Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT said the fire was fully extinguished at 23:45 that night. Kakao services were hosted at the facility, but Kakao and SK C&C are separate companies: SK C&C operated the data center, while Kakao provided the affected services. Ministry of Science and ICT briefing, December 6, 2022.
Why did KakaoTalk and other Kakao services go down?
Kakao’s December 2022 retrospective said service data were distributed across multiple data centers, but some systems needed to transition services to other data centers did not work during the fire. Having copies of data in more than one place is not the same as being able to restart a service elsewhere: failover also depends on functioning control systems, dependencies, power, and recovery procedures. That is a general distinction, not a claim that every one of those factors failed in this incident.
KakaoTalk message sending and receiving resumed about two hours after the fire was extinguished, according to Kakao. The company said restoring its full set of services took about five days. Kakao Corporation, “Why We Were Lacking,” December 6, 2022.
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How long did recovery take?
The facility’s power restoration and Kakao’s service normalization were separate milestones. The ministry reported that power to the data center was fully restored around 05:00 on October 19; Kakao said all its services were normalized around 23:00 on October 20. The times below are those reported by the ministry, except where Kakao’s account is identified.
| Milestone | Reported time | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Fire began in the B3 battery room | October 15, 2022, about 15:19 | Ministry of Science and ICT |
| Fire fully extinguished | October 15, 2022, 23:45 | Ministry of Science and ICT |
| KakaoTalk messaging resumed | About two hours after the fire was extinguished | Kakao Corporation |
| Data center power fully restored | October 19, 2022, around 05:00 | Ministry of Science and ICT |
| Kakao services normalized | October 20, 2022, around 23:00 | Ministry of Science and ICT |
The government described the incident as exposing shortcomings in disaster preparation for digital services and data centers. It announced that SK C&C, Kakao, and Naver would be required to take corrective action and submit further plans; the cited briefing establishes those announced directions, not the full later implementation status of each company. Ministry briefing.
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Which CEO resigned?
Namkoong Whon, then Kakao’s co-CEO, resigned on October 19, 2022, taking responsibility for the service disruption. The resignation was from Kakao leadership, not from SK C&C, the data center operator. At a press conference, he said: “As a CEO of Kakao, I feel miserable and strongly responsible for the incident. So I am stepping down from the post.” Yonhap News Agency, October 19, 2022.
What support did Kakao later report?
Kakao said its support process for the disruption closed on June 30, 2023, and that approximately KRW 27.5 billion had been distributed across the Kakao group, users, and business partners. This is Kakao’s reported support total, not a court judgment or an independently audited damages award. Kakao Corporation, June 30, 2023.
What does the outage show about service resilience?
The incident illustrates why copying data across sites alone cannot ensure continuity. For any digital service, useful resilience questions include whether the recovery objective specifies acceptable downtime and data loss, whether sites are sufficiently separated, whether service dependencies are mapped, and whether failover is automated and tested. Backup integrity and measured restoration time also matter: a backup is useful only if it can be restored, and a failover plan is meaningful only if the service can actually run through it. These are general evaluation criteria, not an audit of Kakao’s later systems.
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