Terms of Use Continuous Over 3 Hours Condition
Difficulty in Proving Individual Causality
Compensation Amount Expected to Be Minimal
Possibility of Class Action Lawsuit Filing
[Asia Economy Reporter Cha Min-young] Damage caused by the KT wired and wireless communication outage is being confirmed across the country, but realistically, compensation for damages is expected to be difficult. KT has yet to identify the exact cause even 24 hours after the incident. Some speculate the possibility of a class-action lawsuit by consumers affected by internet service disruptions, similar to the '5G quality' controversy.
According to the government and industry on the 26th, KT estimates that the communication access failure, which occurred for 40 to 85 minutes starting around 11:20 a.m. the previous day, was due to a routing (network path setting) error. However, the exact cause, including how the routing error occurred, has not yet been determined. The delay in an official statement from KT CEO Koo Hyun-mo is also believed to be due to this.
Professor Kim Seung-joo of Korea University Graduate School of Information Security pointed out, "Neither the Ministry of Science and ICT nor the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) initially diagnosed it as a DDoS attack," adding, "The fact that KT, an insider, initially announced the wrong cause indicates a lack of expertise or insufficient response manuals, so a calm and thorough cause analysis was necessary."
It is also uncertain whether proper compensation for the access failure will be provided. The scale of compensation is based on the operator's own terms and conditions. According to KT's terms of use, customers subscribed to mobile phone, high-speed internet, IPTV, and other services must be compensated if they cannot use the service for more than three consecutive hours without their own fault. However, this incident officially ended after about 1 hour and 25 minutes. It is also difficult for small business owners and others to prove a direct causal relationship for damages. Since the accumulated downtime is calculated on a daily basis, the amount of compensation is expected to be minimal.
Currently, KT's internal decision is considered crucial. Since KT corrected its position from a DDoS attack to a routing error the previous afternoon, internal error is being emphasized, and nationwide damage has been confirmed. Lee So-ra, head of the User Protection Division at the Korea Communications Commission, said, "It is difficult for the government to enforce compensation under the terms of use, so KT needs to proceed with self-compensation," adding, "We are also currently monitoring dispute mediation."
Previously, KT announced a self-compensation policy separate from the terms of use during the Ahyeon Station fire in 2018. They waived up to six months of fees for affected wired and wireless subscribers. Small business owners were compensated 400,000 KRW for 1-2 days of outage, 800,000 KRW for 3-4 days, 1,000,000 KRW for 5-6 days, and 1,200,000 KRW for outages of 7 days or more. A KT official responded that compensation issues are "under discussion."
There are also signs of moves to file damage compensation lawsuits. On the joint lawsuit platform ‘Hwanan Saramdeul’ (Angry People), which was the starting point for the 5G quality lawsuit, posts from those affected by the KT outage are appearing. Attorney Kim Jin-wook of Juwon Law Firm (Limited) said, "Store owners who had difficulty processing POS payments due to the communication outage can claim compensation for property damages equivalent to the average sales decrease during that time and for mental damages." Mental damages caused by online exam interruptions or inability to trade stocks can also be subject to compensation claims.
This incident has also raised calls to improve terms of use that do not consider our society’s dependence on the internet. Kim Ju-ho, head of the Socioeconomic Team 1 at the People's Livelihood Hope Headquarters of the Participation Solidarity, criticized, "The three-hour continuous outage standard is a relic from the old wired telephone era. In a situation where autonomous vehicles are being developed, it is unimaginable for communication to be disconnected even for one minute."
KT’s nationwide wired and wireless internet network was paralyzed for about 40 to 85 minutes starting around 11:20 a.m. the previous day. KT initially suspected a 'large-scale DDoS attack' but corrected it to a 'routing (network path setting) error' within just over two hours. Service disruptions began to be restored sequentially from noon, but instability continued until the next day, the 26th. On major online communities, complaints such as "Is it still not over?", "KT IPTV that was working fine since morning suddenly stopped," and "The internet is down again, is anyone else experiencing this?" have been ongoing since early that morning.
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