S. Korea’s top mobile messenger KakaoTalk suffers brief service disruption

KakaoTalk, South Korea's top mobile messenger, suffered a brief service malfunction Monday, its operator said.

A messenger delivery failure and login error started at 1:35 p.m. and continued for 19 minutes, according to the Kakao Corp..

Kakao said all services are back to normal and apologized for causing any inconveniences.

"Right after detecting the glitch, we carried out an emergency inspection and normalized the disrupted services," it said. "We'd like to offer an apology to all people who suffered an inconvenience."

KakaoTalk, the most popular mobile messenger in South Korea with more than 40 million users, has experienced multiple malfunctions in recent years, including the service outage caused by a data center fire in October last year.

The fire damaged Kakao's main server, located in Pangyo, just south of Seoul, causing major disruptions to everything from everyday communication to ride-hailing, mobile banking and public services tied to the app. The service failure continued for five days.

Source: Yonhap News Agency