No KakaoTalk, No DPG?

2024.06.04. The Fair Economy — "If there is no Honam, there is no nation" (若無湖南 是無國家) — this phrase, meaning that without the Honam region there would be no nation, is known to come from a letter that Admiral Lee Sun-sin sent in 1593 to Hyun Deok-seung, an official at the Office of the Inspector-General. It is interpreted as reflecting how strategically important the Jeolla region, known as Honam, was during the Japanese invasions of Korea.

It seems that in the Digital Platform Government (DPG) policy being pushed today by President Yoon Suk-yeol and his administration, the value of KakaoTalk as the "national messenger" is being weighted extremely heavily. That is because public agencies offering various DPG services are, almost as if they had colluded with one another, providing services to citizens solely through KakaoTalk.

However, KakaoTalk has experienced multiple outages in the past, causing significant inconvenience for citizens. It also holds a monopolistic position, boasting an extremely high market share in the domestic text and messenger markets.

If so, to solve this problem, one option would be to impose an additional obligation on Kakao, the operator of KakaoTalk, to run the service without interruption or failure; another would be to find a solution that could replace KakaoTalk and adopt it as an alternative.

Indeed, the government does appear to be making various demands of Kakao.

For instance, the Ministry of Science and ICT issued a corrective order last month to Kakao over three separate KakaoTalk service outages. It convened its Telecommunications Disaster Management Review Committee, which deliberated and resolved on requirements for Kakao to correct its shortcomings. Kakao was told to submit a corrective action plan within one month — covering steps such as upgrading its pre-work testing system, tightening control over work management, and improving its outage-response manual — and to report the results of those corrective measures within three months.

There appears to be little movement, however, on an alternative for when KakaoTalk itself goes down. Could the government be counting on traditional carrier-based SMS and MMS text messaging as that alternative? Text messaging, being a one-way means of conveying information, makes DPG services difficult to implement, and because text message fees are relatively costly, there is also a risk of wasting taxpayer money. Unless the intent is solely to spread emergency information during a national disaster in which every other option fails, relying on carriers' text services as the alternative would be far too complacent a plan.

In response, voices are emerging in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry suggesting that the public app "Government 24" be developed as an alternative to KakaoTalk.

"Government 24" is an app created by the government to allow users to access its administrative service portal on mobile devices. It has a large user base, with downloads reaching 10 million. The proposal is to add messenger functionality similar to KakaoTalk to this app and enable message notifications through devices. If this is achieved, public institutions providing DPG services would not need to use mobile carrier text services or KakaoTalk messages, thereby saving the costs associated with using these services.

There is also a view that citizens using DPG services should be able to choose which platform — KakaoTalk, carrier text messaging, Government24 and others — they receive a given service through. Beyond the platforms already mentioned, there could be a range of other options, including NAVER TalkTalk, LINE, Facebook Messenger and Telegram. If such an idea were realized, it could help strengthen consumer choice and would also spur greater competition in the messenger market.

There is also talk that if KakaoTalk suffers an outage, uninterrupted service could still be delivered through the Government24 app. This is read as meaning that, rather than passively waiting for KakaoTalk to be restored during an outage, the government could take active administrative steps to keep providing DPG services without interruption through other messenger platforms.

Some predict that if this idea is further developed and refined, it could give rise to an integrated service free of dependence on any single platform.

One hopes the government will come up with a way to move past its current reliance on KakaoTalk — "Korea's No. 1 messenger, but only within Korea" — as it dangles from that single app to deliver DPG services.