KaKao

Kakao participates in the global human rights conference, “RightsCon”

 

RightsCon started as the Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference in 2011 and has since grown into an annual summit on digital human rights, marking its 10th anniversary this year.

 

Due to COVID-19, this year’s RightsCon was held online from Monday, June 7 to Friday, June 11, and was joined by 9,120 people from 164 countries. A total of 527 sessions where held on RightsCon’s core agendas, privacy and transparency, as well as several new agendas including public health, the rights of persons with disabilities, communicable disease and digital technology.

 

Kakao participated in the session of this year’s RightsCon. We discussed our efforts and responsibilities in returning South Korea to a pre-COVID state and shared our philosophy and principles.

 

Kakao’s research fellow Eunpil Choi participated in the session and presented Kakao’s case study.

 

Presented actual cases, including QR code check-ins, “public mask” information and unused vaccine alert functions

 

 

The following are excerpts from Eunpil Choi’s presentation and references.

 

Kakao, working together to return South Korea to a pre-COVID state

 

The COVID-19 pandemic hit humanity hard over a year ago and continues to change our lives. We can’t predict what will happen tomorrow, and the world, where everyone has been stripped from their lives as they know it, continues to turn day after day. COVID-19 has penetrated and speared through our lives so suddenly and unexpectedly. Each country and society is utilizing digital technology and innovative ideas to wisely overcome this crisis and prevent ordinary lives from breaking apart.  

 

Many Korean companies, including Kakao, have used their technologies and internal resources to maintain Koreans’ ordinary lives during COVID-19. Kakao’s goal is to create a better world by connecting people with people, people with the society and societies with societies. Kakao has worked hard, and continues to work hard, to hold onto our way of life during times of unprecedented crisis COVID-19 has presented.

 

Kakao’s sole mission is to create a better world with people and technology. In order to fulfill our goal, Kakao worked hard to create a safer and more convenient lifestyle by continuously developing new technologies and products, and offering diverse digital platform services.

 

Kakao’s QR code check-ins, “public masks” sales information, unused vaccine notifications to contribute to COVID-19 mitigation efforts

 

Kakao put more thought and effort than before into developing new technologies and applying its services in order to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

All of this effort was needed because we had to come up with a plan to defend ourselves from the pandemic using the technologies and service platforms we already had. From a company’s perspective, our focus was to make sure that people could use COVID-19-related Kakao services more easily and use Kakao technologies to build a safer society during uncertain times.

 

We also believed that it was important to abide by the policies we have for our services and users to reach a social consensus and make effective decisions. Therefore, we put more thought and effort into developing and applying the new technologies and services that were used to support people during difficult times.

 

① QR code check-in

 

A QR code check-in feature was added to the mobile messenger KakaoTalk, Kakao’s core service, in order to efficiently manage records of people who entered high-risk facilities and mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

 

Kakao was able to fulfill our corporate responsibility to play a role in preventing the spread of COVID-19 and utilize Kakao’s technology to minimize inconveniences by adding this feature to an existing service.

 

We didn’t stop at simply adding a QR code check-in feature, but also gradually revamped the service to make it more convenient and accessible. The interface was improved for easier use and a ‘shaking’ feature was added to provide quicker access.

 

 

 

Kakao has placed users’ privacy as our utmost priority when it comes to the QR code check-in service. An overall assessment of the data from the QR code check-in process, including the QR code issuing process, the database and destruction of data, as well as a privacy inspection was conducted 28 days after the QR code check-in service was first launched.

 

Details were shared with transparency through Kakao’s Brunch post to provide our service users with clear and accurate information.

 

② “Public masks” sales information

 

At the start of the pandemic, everyone wanted to know where “public masks” (masks that were mandated by the government and sold at a fixed price) were sold, how many masks were available, as well as the location of testing sites and COVID-19-assigned hospitals.

 

This information was quickly added to Kakao Map and Kakao’s navigation services. Kakao was able to utilize our map services to quickly and conveniently provide this valuable information.

 

 

③ Unused vaccine alert

 

Kakao has recently added a service that provides information on vaccination centers as well as the quantity of available vaccines.

 

Kakao Map was used to notify users of the status and quantity of unused vaccines and the mobile messenger app KakaoTalk was used to set up vaccination appointments and provide guidelines about the vaccination process.

 

Kakao’s technology and platform was used for increased convenience and to efficiently manage vaccinations and vaccine supplies. The vaccination graph in “Our Word in Data” shows that the number of vaccinations have sharply increased in Korea since the end of May.

 

 

More importantly, ethics policies were thoroughly applied to users’ privacy and data, and inspections were conducted throughout the entire process. Kakao believes that our users’ digital and human rights are as equally important as preventing COVID-19 with our technologies and services.