Supplementing the 'Kakao Outage Incident'... Imposing Obligation to Provide Damage Complaints

Rep. Jeong Pil-mo, Main Sponsor of the 'Telecommunications Business Act'
User Complaints Submitted to and Disclosed by the Ministry of Science and ICT

A bill is being promoted that requires the government to analyze and disclose damage complaints filed by users against service providers in the event of communication failures of large value-added telecommunications services, such as the 'Kakao Outage Incident.'

On the 29th, Jeong Pil-mo, a member of the National Assembly's Science, Technology, Information and Broadcasting and Communications Committee from the Democratic Party of Korea, announced that he had introduced the "Partial Amendment to the Telecommunications Business Act" with this content as the main proposer.

The amendment allows the Minister of Science and ICT to receive, analyze, and disclose user demands and their processing results regarding service stability from value-added telecommunications service providers who have an obligation to provide stable telecommunications services to users.

During last year's 'Kakao Outage Incident,' Kakao received 87,195 user damage reports but has not disclosed the details. Because of this, the exact extent of damage experienced by numerous citizens during this national communication disaster has not been accurately identified.

In particular, although 36 complaints filed by citizens to the Korea Communications Commission were transferred to Kakao, Kakao has shown an irresponsible attitude by not responding to the commission with the results of complaint handling, according to the lawmaker's office.

Assemblyman Jeong Pil-mo pointed out, "Although the Kakao Outage Incident caused enormous damage to numerous companies and consumers, the fact that individual companies led the damage report reception and compensation made it difficult to grasp the actual situation to prevent recurrence of national communication disasters." He added, "If the government collects and discloses complaints received by large platforms that have a huge influence on the majority of citizens and their processing results, it will help the authorities prepare recurrence prevention measures and guarantee users' right to choose."