Kakao Corp’s co-CEO Namkoong Whon has stepped down,the company said on Wednesday, after an outage that shut down South Korea's largest mobile chat app and other services,triggering widespread backlash from authorities and the public.
The resignation, effective Wednesday, leaves co-CEO Hong Euntaek as the sole CEO.
The company apologised for the outage that started on Saturday due to a fire at a data centre run by SK C&C near Seoul.
Most of its systems were restored by Wednesday,but miscellaneous functions remain shaky and disruptions to a wide range of services from payments to taxis and restaurant bookings have raised questions about public reliance on the app.
KakaoTalk launched in 2010. has more than 47 million active accounts in South Korea. making it one of the most ubiauitous apps in the country of 51.6 million.