Kakao's role as public infrastructure draws attention at Japanese academic conference

Kakao's expansion into public infrastructure is drawing significant attention in Japan, with researchers crediting the company's services for supporting administrative innovation through collaboration with the public sector.

Kakao said Monday that a research paper analyzing its public value and administrative innovation cases was presented Sunday at the 62nd Annual Conference of the Business History Society of Japan, held at Hosei University in Tokyo.

The Business History Society of Japan is an academic organization where business historians gather to share the latest research.

The study was jointly conducted by Kim Sung-mi, a professor in the business administration department at Prefectural University of Hiroshima, and Jeon Sung-min, a professor in the business administration department at Gachon University. It was presented under the title "From Intermediary to Infrastructure: Kakao's Social Institutionalization and Economic Impact."

The researchers examined Kakao's growth over 15 years, from 2010 to 2025, analyzing the historical and managerial mechanisms by which a private messenger that initially connected individuals expanded its role into a digital and AI transformation infrastructure through collaboration with the public sector.

The paper covered specific digital and AI transformation cases Kakao has developed in partnership with the public sector.

Among the AI-driven administrative innovation cases highlighted was the "AI National Secretary," an agentic AI service developed in collaboration with the Ministry of Interior and Safety. The researchers analyzed it as an example of the shift from a reactive, application-based administrative model to a proactive, personalized one. The AI National Secretary is an AI agent within KakaoTalk that allows users to access public services — including issuing digital certificates and booking public facilities — via text or voice.

On the digital transformation of tax and fiscal administration, the paper examined Nowon-gu in Seoul's KakaoTalk delinquent tax notification service. After its introduction, the message open rate doubled, and annual delinquent tax collections reached 6.1 billion won ($4.43 million), or 105.8 percent of the target. The service also cut the annual postal mailing budget by 49 million won, a reduction of 44 percent.

In the area of public safety, the paper introduced the Supreme Prosecutors' Office's "Jjin Center" KakaoTalk channel, a service that verifies forged impersonation documents around the clock and blocks phishing sites in coordination with the Korea Internet & Security Agency. Consultations through the channel tripled within a year, reaching 6,717 cases per month.

Alongside this, the paper covered "public skin" technology — official background designs applied to KakaoTalk channels run by public institutions such as the Korea Transportation Safety Authority — as well as a smishing-detection chatbot called "Boho Nara" operated by the Korea Internet & Security Agency.

Shimamoto Minoru, a professor at the Graduate School of Business Administration at Hitotsubashi University who chaired the presentation session, said he hoped Kakao's empirical cases would serve as both academically rigorous and practically effective material illustrating the public role of platform companies and the direction of policy in the age of AI and digital transformation.

Kim Dae-won, Kakao's policy leader, said it was meaningful that the company's contributions to public value in everyday life had been recognized as a significant best practice by global academic experts.

Meanwhile, Kakao has also been selected as an implementing organization for "AI for All," the government's project to build AI services for the entire population. The Kakao consortium plans to offer a service combining a general-purpose chatbot and an AI agent, using the country's most widely used messenger app as the entry point.