Korean Messengers in China

 

Mobile messengers Line and Kakao are on the verge of disappearing from China forever.

Partial services for Line and Kakao were abruptly suspended on July 1, and have not come back for 26 days.

For the first two weeks, the reason these services were blocked was not known. It has now been revealed that the Chinese government intentionally shut off the services. However, the Korean government and industries were not able to find appropriate solutions, and therefore might lose China, the biggest market in the world.

According to the IT industry on July 27, message transmissions for Line have all been blocked in China starting from July 1. Kakao's message transmission ability remains working, but all additional services and KakaoStory do not function.

The definite reasons for this situation have still not been clarified for over two weeks. There are no internal technical errors in two companies' networking protocols.

Korean IT industry officials have started to assume that the Chinese government coercively shut off the services. The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning obtained an official response from the Chinese government, which answered but asked the ministry not to disclose the information. Unofficially, it is said that foreign mobile messengers including Line, Kakaotalk, and Yahoo Messenger were blocked to prevent terrorist activity around July 5, the fifth anniversary of the July 2009 Ürümqi riots. However, this is not an official statement by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning.

A staff member from the office of Congressman Choi Won-sik of the New Politics Alliance for Democracy said, “Congressman Choi asked the First Vice Minister of Science, ICT and Future Planning if he requested an official opinion from the Chinese government regarding the problems of Line and Kakaotalk in China in the plenary meeting. Afterwards, the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning requested such information to China, and heard back from China. However, China asked the ministry to not to disclose their comments for security reasons.”

Most IT industry experts in Korea have the opinion that the Chinese government suspended the services of Line and Kakaotalk in order to protect domestic services, together with the purpose of preventing terrorist actions. While messages are transmitted through Kakaotalk, all message transmissions are blocked for Line, which will immediately drive all users of Line away.

Recently in China, Line has become very popular as the drama “My Love from a Star” included indirect advertisements of Line. A 30-year-old Chinese tourist encountered at Line Friends Shop of Myung-dong, Seoul said, “Younger people from 10-30 years old in China are mainly using Line, and older generation use WeChat. Line has many kinds of fun stickers to attract youngsters.” In this situation, Chinese government might want to contain Line’s popularity by blocking the message transmissions of Line, the fundamental function of all mobile messengers.

Although Chinese mobile messenger WeChat is number two worldwide, it is most likely a domestic service. More than 90 percent of the 600 million WeChat users reside in China. This is why the Chinese government, threatened by Line’s aggressive expansion in the domestic Chinese market, might want to fight against it intentionally.

However, the Korean government has not yet taken proper counteractions. The promise “to normalize the services in China from July 15” has not been kept, and no further countermeasures have been set forth yet.

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