Popular Korean messenger application KakaoTalk was down for several hours this weekend.

On October 15 KST at approximately 3:30 PM, a fire that started in the third-floor battery room of the SK C&C Data Center in Pangyo affected KakaoTalk and similar services, including mobile payment service KakaoPay, making them inoperable until roughly 2 AM the next morning.

According to Korean business outlet Economic Review, the 11+ hour interruption of service is the longest in the company's history, leaving users unable to communicate, use their KakaoPay services to make online/offline payments, or access other services connected to the brand. Due to this, news of the fire quickly spread through social media, where it remained a hot topic for the rest of the day.

"Kakao services, including KakaoTalk, are unable to run smoothly due to a fire," a representative for Kakao announced through the brand's official social media. "We will do our best for a quick recovery."

As of roughly a full day, Kakao VP Yang Hyun Seo informed the press that, while Kakao services are up and running again, only 16,000 of the 32,000 servers affected by the fire have been restored, meaning there may still be some technical difficulties. "Because the entire power supply is cut off, it takes a lot of time to switch traffic even with redundancy measures," he continued. "The fact that all 32,000 servers went down is an unprecedented situation in the IT industry."

Meanwhile, KakaoTalk is used by 94.4% of South Koreans as the main method of digital communication.