Card Usage at Accommodations and Restaurants Drops 26% Due to KT Network Outage

Assemblyman Kim Hoe-jae Analyzes Samsung Card Usage Amounts on the Accident Date and Three Days Before and After

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Ki Ha-young] It has been revealed that on the 25th of last month, when KT caused a telecommunications outage, card spending in the accommodation and food service sectors dropped by nearly 26%.

On the 4th, Kim Hoe-jae, a member of the Democratic Party of Korea, analyzed data titled 'Card Spending Status from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. around October 25 (the time of the outage)' received from Samsung Card. According to the analysis, card spending in the accommodation and food service sectors during the outage period was 2.91 billion KRW.

This figure represents a 25.9% (1.02 billion KRW) decrease compared to the average card spending of 3.92 billion KRW during the same time period on the three days before and after the incident (October 22?24 and 26?28). Compared to a week earlier on October 18 (3.51 billion KRW), it decreased by 17.2% (610 million KRW).

Although card spending in the accommodation and food service sectors declined, total card spending across all industries increased. On the day of the incident, total card spending across all sectors from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. was 51.13 billion KRW. This is a 9.5% (4.42 billion KRW) increase compared to the three-day average of 46.71 billion KRW before and after the incident. Compared to the previous week on October 18 (50.26 billion KRW), it also rose by 1.7% (870 million KRW).

Representative Kim stated, "The KT telecommunications outage occurred during a period of consumer recovery and the lunch business peak hours, causing enormous business losses for self-employed individuals and small business owners. However, KT's announced compensation plan is insufficient in comparison."

According to KT's compensation plan, KT will uniformly waive fees equivalent to 15 hours for individual subscribers and 10 days for small business owners. The average compensation amount per individual user is estimated to be around 1,000 KRW, and small business users are expected to receive an average compensation of 7,000 to 8,000 KRW, leading to evaluations that the actual compensation amount received by individual customers is minimal.

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