Kakao inks deal to build data center south of Seoul

South Korean internet giant Kakao Corp. said Monday it will establish a data center in a city south of Seoul in an industrial-educational cooperation project.

Under a deal with Hanyang University and the Gyeonggi provincial government, the data center will be built on the university's campus in Ansan, some 30 kilometers south of Seoul, at a cost of 400 billion won ($337 million).   

Kakao Corp., which operates the country's most-used mobile messenger KakaoTalk, said ground will be broken for the envisioned center next year for completion in 2023.

The data center will house a total of 120,000 servers with a data storage capacity of 6 exabytes, Kakao said. One exabyte equals about 1 billion gigabytes.

A data center serves as a key infrastructure component of the fourth industrial revolution, as it manages an integrated system of servers, networks, storage facilities and network equipment.

The Ansan municipality, also a partner in the deal, said the data center is expected to generate economic ripple effects, including creating 2,700 jobs and inducing approximately 800 billion won of production. (Yonhap)