President Yoon Suk-yeol gestures as he answers reporters' questions at the presidential office in Yongsan District, Seoul, Monday. Yonhap

Yoon says Kakao is virtually part of national infrastructure

By Nam Hyun-woo

The presidential office announced a plan to establish a cybersecurity task force team to thwart threats and risks that can disrupt the nation's key infrastructure after disruptions to Kakao's ubiquitous messaging and settlement functions wreaked havoc on the nation over the weekend.

Kim Sung-han, director of the National Security Office, will preside over a meeting with ranking officials from the science and defense ministries, the National Intelligence Service, Supreme Prosecutors' Office and the military.

The disruption of Kakao's services "not only made the lives of ordinary citizens tougher, but was also an incident that can impact national security. The incident proved that such worries are real and can happen," an official from the presidential office told reporters. "Thus, there was a shared view among senior presidential secretaries that we need a task force team that can regularly check cybersecurity."

The announcement of the cybersecurity team came after President Yoon Suk-yeol presided over a meeting with senior presidential secretaries.

Senior presidential secretary for public relations Kim Eun-hye said in a briefing that platform malfunctions stemming from cyberattacks or disasters may expand to systematic risks, and platform service providers should make preemptive investments for cyber security or data stabilization. Thus, it is important to "have a scheme which checks whether a monopolistic platform company is fulfilling its social responsibility to prevent systematic risks," she said.

The presidential office unveiled the plan to establish the cybersecurity task force hours after the president stressed that messaging and networking services provided by Kakao are practically a part of Korea's national infrastructure and hinted at the possibility of government intervention in case of major disruptions in the future, like the service outage caused by a fire over the past weekend that paralyzed Kakao's widely-used functions.

He made the remarks to clarify why the government needs to intervene in the private sector. Yoon said the government should explore follow-up measures and preventive steps considering the ubiquitousness of Kakao's services.

On his way to the presidential office, Monday, Yoon told reporters that he ordered the minister of science and ICT to oversee the recovery process of Kakao's services and explore government measures to prevent a recurrence.

"It is a network operated by a private company, but equivalent to a national infrastructure network for the public," Yoon said. "Since the National Assembly is paying a lot of attention to this matter, it is important to set up regulatory schemes for prevention and come up with reporting systems to enable fast announcements in case of such an incident."