Year-Long Privacy Disagreement Between Kakao And South Korean Government Ends As The Company Hands Over Requested Data
After a year of impasse over privacy dispute, Kakao finally declares it will cooperate with the Korean prosecutors to handover information requested by the government to prevent cyber defamation.
The South Korean company behind messaging application KakaoTalk reveals that the Korean prosecutors agree to certain terms for them to gather data which will be used for investigation, ZDnet reported on Monday.
"This is not a rash decision we made," a spokesman from Kakao says. "We worked with the prosecutors' office to find terms that work both for us and for them, to protect user privacy and allow prosecutors to investigate whatever issue they need to investigate."
He also says that KakaoTalk users have nothing to worry about since the Korean prosecutors will only ask for the information of certain users whom they found to be committing grave violations.
"I think that from the users' standpoint this issue is very sensitive because users might think that 'everybody is going to look at my KakaoTalk information', but unless you are committing a very serious crime, [prosecutors] are not going to request your information."
Last year, the company refused to cooperate with the Korean government and said that they will continue to protect the privacy of the users.
"We stopped accepting prosecution warrants to monitor our users' private conversions from 7 October, and hereby announce that we will continue to do so," Kakao co-CEO Sirgoo Lee says, as noted by BBC News on Oct. 14, 2014.
A mobile analyst says the move is a strategy of Rim Ji Hoon (Jimmy Lim), the new CEO, to change the structure of the company.
"There are two things to behind this story. There is a new CEO, [Rim] Ji Hoon, and he is believed to be eager to change the company structure and culture, so they can move on to new business, including O2O businesses," says Jay Park of KDB Daewoo Securities.
Rim replaced former CEO Lee Seok Woo in September. Kakao says appointing Rim as the new chief executive marks the company's beginning of its "second chapter."
"For the past month or so, I deliberated over how to unfold the future of Kakao as I spent my time trying to fully understand the organization, and communicate extensively with the members of the company," says Rim.
"Focusing on the keywords mobile and connection, I will strive to further the global competitiveness of the company by bringing greater speed [and] I will work to foster a culture that supports the realization of innovative ideas to bring our platform competitiveness to the fullest."