(LEAD) Kakao, Naver suffer service disruption due to fire at data center

SEOUL, Oct. 15 (Yonhap) — South Korea’s two major tech giants — Kakao Corp. and Naver Corp. — suffered a service malfunction on Saturday due to a fire at a data center, officials said.

The blaze broke out at around 3:33 p.m. at the building of SK C&C located in Pangyo, just south of Seoul, they said. The building also houses the data centers for Naver and Kakao.

No casualty was reported and the fire was limited to an electric room, an SK C&C official said. The power was cut off at the data center for safety reasons and will be resumed sometime soon.

A message delivery failure and login error occurred at the country’s top mobile messenger KakaoTalk, according to the company.

Other service failures were also reported at Kakao’s online payment unit Kakao Pay Corp. and its gaming platform Kakao Games.

Kakao-owned portal website Daum and Melon, the country’s top music streaming service under Kakao, also suffered a service malfunction.

Naver also said a partial disruption was reported at its shopping services, including Shopping Live.