Criticism mounts over government's poor response to network paralysis

Officials at a community service center in Seoul's Dongjak District check the recovery of the administrative network on Sunday after it suffered a system failure starting on Friday, paralyzing the issuances of government certificates and documents. Yonhap

System running again after 3-day breakdown; critics say fundamental problem remains unsolved

By Jung Da-hyun

The government faced criticism over a system failure that crippled administrative computer networks and paralyzed both offline and online issuances of civil documents, causing massive disruptions to public services across the country.

The Saeol administrative network used by civil servants to access government-approved documents became inaccessible at 8:40 a.m. on Friday, suspending municipal government document services. Later that day, the government's online civil service portal, Government24, also went down, unprecedentedly paralyzing all offline and online services of government-issued certificates and documents to the public.

The Ministry of the Interior and Safety announced on Sunday afternoon that both the Saeol system and Government24 were restored after the three-day service breakdown. It noted that the system failure could have been caused by some network equipment that was replaced recently.

This is the third time this year that the government's computer network was paralyzed.

The online network system used by judicial courts experienced a shutdown in March, causing delays in trials and the suspension of services such as electronic litigation and case searches. The service of the Supreme Court's Internet Registry Office, which reads copies of the register, was also suspended.

In June, an error occurred with the fourth-generation National Education Administrative Information System (NEIS) for elementary, middle and high schools, leading to confusion at school sites. Setbacks were also experienced in the final exam records for the first semester of middle school and high school, as well as in the preparation of school records for high school seniors.

Interior and Safety Minister Lee Sang-min inspects the recovery of the government’s administrative computer network errors at the National Information Resource Agency in Daejeon, Sunday. Yonhap

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Following the latest incident, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo presided over a video meeting at the Government Complex in Seoul on Saturday to discuss recovery strategies and future measures with related ministries.

“We apologize for the inconvenience and confusion caused by the suspension of public services due to the government's administrative computer network failure. We will do our best to normalize it as soon as possible,” he said.

Interior and Safety Minister Lee Sang-min, who returned earlier than scheduled during his trip to the United States, chaired a meeting to address the problem of local administrative computer disabilities on the same day.

"We will mobilize private experts to closely identify the cause of this incident and do our best to prevent it from happening again," Lee said.

However, critics said the fundamental problem has not been solved, claiming that the government's response is passive and damage relief measures have not been mentioned.

In October last year, the government declared a significant strengthening of surveillance and investigation of Kakao when the disruption incident occurred at the firm's network. The government even implemented a prevention method for Kakao service breakdowns to avoid recurrence. At the time, Kakao also announced a 500 billion won ($386 million) compensation plan as a follow-up measure.

Compared to the previous situation, there has been no strict declaration about investigation or compensation measures for the government’s administrative computer network disruption.

Affected citizens have a way to claim civil damages against the state, but experts analyze that proving a causal relationship with actual economic damage, such as non-issuance of certificates, may be challenging.

Regarding the possibility of the government paying damage compensation before litigation, most analysts believe it will not be easy, as administrative computer services cover all citizens, making it difficult to determine the exact scope of damage.