Kakao begins providing ‘unsend’ feature

SEOUL, Sept. 17 (Yonhap) — Kakao Corp., the operator of South Korea’s No. 1 mobile messenger KakaoTalk, on Monday kicked off its “unsend” feature that allows users to delete missent messages on its messaging app.

Users can delete most mistakenly sent messages, photos, videos or emojis, whether they were read or not by the recipient, within five minutes after being sent under the new feature, Kakao said in a statement.

Previously, KakaoTalk had a feature for deleting messages, but they were only erased on a user’s app and not on the recipient’s device.

The new feature comes amid persistent requests for the feature from ordinary users whose daily use of the app is characterized by prompt messaging that leads to frequent mistakes and texts being forwarded to the wrong person.

A string of messenger operators have recently adopted similar functions to reflect market demands. Line, Japan’s most widely utilized messaging app, allows users to delete both read and unread messages, images and stickers within 24 hours of being sent.

Line users can open chat rooms and tap “edit messages” to delete mistaken messages, and the feature supports both mobile and computer versions of the messenger.

Last year, Telegram also adopted a similar function for deleting or unsending messages within the first 48 hours if the recipient has not seen the message.

This KakaoTalk messaging app window shows a missent message deleted by the sender. (Yonhap)