South Korean internet company Kakao lost one of its joint CEOs following an outage of its messaging and payment services which lasted several days.

In a stock market filing, Kakao stated Hong Euntaek will take over as sole chief after Whon Namkoong stepped down.

Earlier in the week the company apologised for the extended outage of its services, which failed on 15 October due to a fire at a data centre. In addition to KakaoTalk, the company’s banking and gaming services were also affected.

The company said it was working to identify the cause of the fire, implement a recovery plan and prepare measures to prevent a recurrence.

It also plans to compensate related parties, though expects the financial impact to be limited as it seeks a contribution by the operator of the affected data centre.

Most of its systems were operational by today (19 October).

KakaoTalk closed June with 47.5 million monthly active users in Korea, making it the largest messaging service in the nation at that time.

The Korea Times reported South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol argued KakaoTalk is practically a part of the country’s communications infrastructure, with the Fair Trade Commission and a cybersecurity task force to review the incident.