Minister Lim Hye-sook of the Ministry of Science and ICT: "Apologies to the Public... Discussing Solutions with KT"

Visit to Gwacheon KT Network Control Center

Minister Lim Hye-sook of the Ministry of Science and ICT visited the KT Network Control Center on the afternoon of the 26th and received an explanation from Lee Cheol-gyu, Vice President of KT, regarding the causes of the internet outage and measures to prevent recurrence.
[Photo by Ministry of Science and ICT]

[Asia Economy Reporter Cha Min-young] On the 26th, Lim Hye-sook, Minister of Science and ICT, met with reporters and stated, "We will form a comprehensive inspection team to discuss the cause and countermeasures," adding, "We apologize for causing inconvenience to the public."

Minister Lim visited the Gwacheon KT Network Control Center, which manages the KT network, around 4 p.m. that day. She plans to inspect the activities of the accident analysis team investigating the cause and urge KT to prepare follow-up measures.

Minister Lim said, "KT initially suspected a DDoS attack, but upon re-examination, it was found that the routing was incorrectly set during the installation of a new router," and added, "There should be discussions on specific measures to resolve such issues in the future."

She explained that the problem occurred during the replacement work for KT network advancement the previous day. Minister Lim said, "During the network advancement replacement work, the network should not have been connected, but it was, which caused a total outage."

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 estimated the cause as a 'large-scale DDoS attack' but corrected it to a 'routing (network path setting) error' within just over two hours. The service disruption was gradually restored from around noon, but some areas continued to experience unstable internet until the 26th.