Lee Hae-rin is a City Desk reporter at The Korea Times, covering social issues, tourism and taekwondo. She is passionate about speaking up for the rights of minorities, including women, LGBTQ+, people with disabilities and animals as well as discovering the latest makgeolli trend in town. Feel free to reach her at lhr@koreatimes.co.kr.
Network failure dents Korea's digital reputation
Song Sang-hyo, who leads the Ministry of the Interior and Safety's task force on the government's administrative network failure, speaks during the ministry's press conference in Seoul, Saturday. Yonhap
By Lee Hae-rin
Once praised as the paragon of digital governance, Korea’s administrative digital network system has been disgraced and is losing public trust following a series of service disruptions that caused massive inconveniences across the country.
Eight days after the initial breakdown, the government finally came up with the root cause of the failure, Saturday, and vowed to take measures to prevent future system errors. However, questions are still lingering over if it will be able to find a fundamental solution to the recurring breakdowns in the country's safety and security networks.
During a press conference, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety pointed out that the network paralyses were due to a suspected issue with equipment failure.
The ministry said a router failed to send data through the network, resulting in the loss of data and a subsequent service outage.
The ministry also said that it had found no signs of cyberattack behind the disruption and vowed to strengthen its network security by conducting preliminary checkups on its old equipment and improving its manual on service errors.
“The ministry will self-correct to build a stable, digital government to prevent the recurrence of such issues that inconvenience the public under any circumstances," Vice Interior Minister Ko Ki-dong said.
The announcement comes after a series of large-scale breakdowns in the government’s administrative network over the last week, tarnishing the government’s reputation and losing public trust.
The Saeol electronic administrative network suffered a service disruption in the morning of Nov. 17, and the Government24 civil service portal also broke down later in the afternoon that day.
The network system was fully restored after 56 hours of paralysis causing massive inconvenience in public services across the country. A week later, a mobile ID service run by the Korea Minting and Security Printing Corp. (KOMSCO) experienced another outage for six hours, Nov. 24.
In response, the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) urged Interior Minister Lee Sang-min to step down from his post to be held accountable for the fatal breakdown and President Yoon Suk Yeol to apologize and correct the situation.
“The government’s administrative computer network system broke down four times and the public trust in the Yoon administration is at stake … Since when did the world-class level digital government become inferior to a corner shop?” Rep. Kang Sun-woo, a DPK spokesperson, said in a written briefing, Saturday.
“Has Minister Lee learned nothing after the Oct. 29 Itaewon tragedy and the tunnel flooding in Osong?” Kang said, referring to a series of recent social catastrophes for which the ministry was criticized for inadequate safety measures. “Lee was never able to protect the people from disasters and his stepping down from the post is a first step towards settling the issues.”