"Foreseen Human Error Due to Lack of Management System" Science and ICT Committee Criticizes KT for Causing Communication Outage... KT "Repeatedly Apologize"

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Eunmo Koo] The National Assembly's Science, Technology, Information and Broadcasting and Communications Committee continued to criticize KT for the wired and wireless network outage incident that occurred last month.

At the full committee meeting held on the afternoon of the 9th at the National Assembly in Yeouido, Seoul, Kim Sang-hee, Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly (Democratic Party of Korea), said, "This incident was caused by KT's complacent and incompetent response, where a simple mistake led to a nationwide communication outage causing significant damage," and pointed out, "I do not understand why KT entrusted the important task of replacing routers (network routing equipment) to a partner company instead of handling it themselves."

In response, Kang Guk-hyun, KT Customer Division Head (President), who attended as a witness that day, said, "We carry out about 4,000 replacements of new equipment such as routers annually, and KT purchases router equipment from two companies for use," adding, "The company that knows the router equipment best is responsible for maintenance and repair."

Seo Chang-seok, KT Network Innovation TF Head (Executive Vice President), also explained, "This incident involved new equipment to upgrade the corporate network, and the partner company knows the new equipment best," adding, "According to the contract, the partner company is responsible for everything from hardware installation to service procedures, so they mainly performed the work."

Regarding criticism about the lack of a system to prevent routing errors from spreading nationwide, Executive Vice President Seo responded, "There are three main types of routers: center, main, and edge. The center and main routers have safety devices, and the edge router has some, but since this was newly installed, we failed to include that function," adding, "The management responsibility clearly lies with us, and we will be careful to prevent recurrence."

Criticism also continued regarding the absence of manuals for related work. Lee Yong-bin, a Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker, pointed out, "Each router had a preventive system, but it was explained that the system was omitted during the new edge router setup, which raises doubts about whether there is a related manual."

There was also criticism that the compensation plan proposed by KT was insufficient. Yang Jeong-sook, an independent lawmaker, said, "The entire nation suffered damage and the whole country experienced a blackout, but the compensation amounts are 1,000 won for individuals and 7,000 to 8,000 won for small business owners," and questioned, "Do you think this matches the public sentiment?"

In response, President Kang said, "The outage duration and scale of damage vary, so it is actually difficult to estimate and verify the damage scale," adding, "Since we are a listed company, we decided considering shareholders' interests, and we are receiving damage reports from small business owners through a dedicated support center, so we will judge based on these situations."

Meanwhile, KT explained, "It is not that there is no related manual; the work procedure document serves as the work manual, but there was an omission of some necessary content when introducing new equipment in the work procedure document."

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