After a mass exodus of users, one of South Korea's biggest social networks says it will now defy government requests to hand over its users data.
On Friday, BBC Trending reported on the South Koreans fleeing the country's most popular chat app - Kakao Talk. The authorities had threatened to prosecute people using the app to spread rumours about the president, Park Geun-hye. The company behind the app, Daum Kakao, had originally said it would have to comply with government requests to pry into its users conversations. As a result, more than 1.5 million South Koreans signed up to a more secure German chat app called Telegram Messenger.
But yesterday Daum Kakao reversed its position, external, saying it will no longer respond to government requests for access to private information. Sirgoo Lee, co-CEO of the company, reportedly said he would take full responsibility for the decision, and was prepared to face the legal consequences. "We stopped accepting prosecution warrants to monitor our users' private conversions from 7 October, and hereby announce that we will continue to do so," the Korea Times reports Lee as saying.
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