Altteul Transportation Card Outage Recurs 12 Hours After Recovery

Altteul Transportation Card Service Suspended on 6-7th
Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport: "Confirmed Recurrence of Malfunction... Emergency Inspection Over Weekend"

The 'Altteul Transportation Card' service, which offers discount benefits provided by the government, local governments, and the private sector when using public transportation, was suspended again just one day after the restoration of a malfunction. The government stated that the reason for the service suspension was due to an emergency inspection.

On the 6th, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced that the Altteul Transportation Card mobile application and website would be unavailable from 11 a.m. on the same day until the 7th for two days due to an emergency inspection. Previously, the Altteul Transportation Card experienced a malfunction for about 13 hours from 9 a.m. to 10:10 p.m. the day before. However, the service was suspended again just about 12 hours after being restored.

Notice of Emergency Inspection for Altteul Transportation Card Service
[Image source: Screenshot from Altteul Transportation Card official website]

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport believes that the system error was not fundamentally resolved the previous day and will continue additional work with the system management company over the weekend. A ministry official said, "Since the morning of the 6th, it has been confirmed that the service has been experiencing some malfunctions again," adding, "We will address the issue through a fundamental inspection to prevent recurrence."

The ministry explained that this malfunction occurred due to a functional defect in the Altteul Transportation Card database (DB). When the information recorded in the DB accumulates beyond a certain level, there is a problem with the function that automatically organizes it, and as the number of users has recently surged, the increased amount of information was not processed in time, causing the system to become unresponsive. In the past, server malfunctions occurred when users gathered all at once, but this time, there is a problem with the DB, and if additional issues are identified, recovery may take longer.

Plan to Provide 'Maximum Mileage' for Missing Departure/Arrival Records

The number of Altteul Transportation Card users was about 21,000 when introduced in 2019 but has increased significantly since last year, currently reaching approximately 1.1 million. The Altteul Transportation Card service provides up to 20% mileage proportional to the distance traveled by walking or bicycle (up to 800 meters) to use public transportation, and the card company offers an additional discount of about 10%.

Since the distance traveled is measured through a Global Positioning System (GPS), users must log in to the app and enter departure and arrival information to receive the discount, but during the malfunction, it was impossible to enter this information. Accordingly, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport plans to provide the maximum mileage (based on 800 meters traveled) to users who could not record departure and arrival information due to connection failures and thus could not receive the Altteul Transportation Card discount benefits.