Government to Announce KT Outage Cause Analysis Today... KT Holds Emergency Board Meeting

[Asia Economy Reporter Eunmo Koo] On the afternoon of the 29th, four days after KT experienced a nationwide wired and wireless internet network outage, the government will announce the results of its cause analysis. KT will hold an emergency board meeting to discuss compensation plans and other recovery measures.

The Ministry of Science and ICT plans to hold a briefing at 3 p.m. chaired by Second Vice Minister Kyung-sik Cho to explain the cause of the KT internet outage that occurred on the 25th.

Earlier, KT revealed that on the day of the incident, while performing 'routing' work (network path configuration) on newly installed equipment for network advancement in Busan, an error occurred where a line of command that should have been entered was missing during the input process. This affected equipment nationwide and paralyzed the entire network, according to KT. Furthermore, although this work was approved to be done at night, it was actually carried out during daytime hours, which reportedly caused the problem to escalate uncontrollably.

The Ministry of Science and ICT is expected to disclose detailed incident circumstances, analysis results, and measures to prevent recurrence. It is also anticipated that they will explain the process by which KT initially misattributed the cause to a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack immediately after the outage, but reversed this conclusion after about two hours to identify a routing error. After the incident, the ministry issued a 'caution' level information and communication incident crisis alert, formed an analysis team to investigate the cause, received related data from KT, conducted inspections, and gathered expert opinions.

On the 28th, KT CEO Koo Hyun-mo told reporters, "We installed new equipment for network advancement and input routing information suitable for that equipment," adding, "The work, which should have been done at night in Busan, was done during the day, causing the problem." However, he did not disclose specific details such as why the work was done during the day, whether there were manuals or managers, or where exactly the operator made a mistake.

According to industry sources, KT is expected to hold an emergency board meeting attended by CEO Koo and others to discuss compensation plans and measures to prevent recurrence. According to KT’s current terms and conditions, users must experience network outages of more than three hours per day and a cumulative six hours per month to be eligible for compensation. The board members are expected to discuss revising the current compensation criteria in the terms, compensation plans related to this incident, and compensation plans for small business owners and self-employed individuals.

CEO Koo said the previous day, "I think the three-hour standard in the terms has been in place for a long time," adding, "At a time when many services rely on telecommunications as they do now, it is desirable to improve this as well." Currently, under KT’s terms, users must experience outages of more than three hours per day and a cumulative six hours per month to receive compensation, but KT intends to significantly relax this standard.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.