Kakao

South Korea's Personal Information Protection Commission opened a field investigation and the Seoul YMCA Civic Relay Center filed a formal complaint on October 12, 2026 alleging that Kakao's 'Brand Messages' advertising service, which lets businesses message KakaoTalk users who have not added their channel as a friend, matches phone numbers supplied by advertisers against KakaoTalk accounts to identify ad targets without specific user consent, shares user engagement data (views/clicks) back to advertisers without clear consent, and lacks a comprehensive opt-out mechanism. Spam complaints about Brand Messages rose roughly 2.5x in 2026 (94,947 complaints, Jan-Jul) versus the prior comparable period, and related regulatory violation cases rose from 2 in 2025 to 22 in 2026. Kakao maintains the service operates on recipients' prior consent under the Information and Communications Network Act.

Kakao's labor union (Kakao branch of the Korean Chemical, Food and Allied Industry Workers' Union) protested outside the Seoul High Court on September 23, 2026 against the company's planned corporate split into Kakao X (a surviving entity for investment and portfolio management, absorbing Kakao Investment) and Kakao AI (a new entity for AI services). The union said the restructuring plan lacked sufficient guarantees for employment succession and working conditions for affected staff. A shareholder campaign to block the merger by gathering 20% opposition fell short at roughly 2%, allowing management to proceed via board resolution; the union has since shifted to a public-opinion campaign.

Kakao's labor talks with its union resumed in June 2026 but were clouded by a persistent leadership vacuum at the South Korean tech conglomerate, with workers at multiple Kakao subsidiaries (including Kakao Pay and Kakao Mobility) raising strike threats over stagnant wages, opaque restructuring, and management's failure to commit to negotiated terms. The dispute extended a multi-year pattern of governance turmoil at Kakao following the criminal probe into founder Brian Kim and continued operational instability across the group.

On February 4, 2026, Kakao notified KakaoTalk's 47M+ users it would begin collecting and analyzing usage records and patterns for targeted advertising. After public backlash over privacy invasion, Kakao revised its terms on February 11, deleting some controversial provisions. This followed a September 2025 redesign debacle that was rolled back in 5 days after user revolt, and criticism of a location-sharing feature that allegedly enabled stalking.

Kakao Pay transferred approximately 54.2 billion records of personal information covering roughly 40 million users to Alibaba-owned Alipay between April 2018 and May 2024, without obtaining specific user consent, ostensibly to build credit-risk scores for Apple service payments. South Korea's Personal Information Protection Commission fined Kakao Pay roughly 5.96 billion won and issued a corrective order in January 2025; the Financial Supervisory Service imposed an additional 12.976 billion won fine and institutional warning in February 2026 for violating the Credit Information Act and Electronic Financial Transactions Act; Apple was separately fined for failing to disclose the outsourcing. The Seoul Administrative Court upheld the PIPC penalty on June 11, 2026, rejecting Kakao Pay's argument that users had consented, and Gyeonggi police raided Kakao Pay headquarters on July 6-7, 2026 as part of a criminal investigation into company executives.