The Korea Communications Commission, the state media regulator, on Thursday said it plans to investigate Kakao Corp., operator of South Korea’s top mobile messenger KakaoTalk, over the legality of its in-app notifications.

The move came after a local civic group accused Kakao of unilaterally sending out messages notifying users of purchases, orders and deliveries made through the app -- which costs nominal data usage fees -- without obtaining the consumer’s consent.

The civic body had asserted that Kakao breached a local telecommunications law that mandates companies notify customers of potential fees and brought the case to the KCC in May, prompting the state media regulator to open an investigation. 


Kakao asserts that KakaoTalk users are already aware that they are subject to data usage fees when using the mobile messenger in non-Wi-Fi settings and that it has been notifying users of such since March.

The firm also emphasized the messages, given their informational nature, should not require prior consent for viewing, similar to how users do not consider the “costs” of viewing a banner ad on the Internet.

Kakao added that one notification message sent via KakaoTalk uses up an insignificant amount of data -- the first notification message uses up an average of 15 kilobytes of data, while subsequent messages each utilize just 2 kilobytes.

By Sohn Ji-young (jys@heraldcorp.com)