SEOUL, The government’s online administrative network remained inaccessible for the second day Saturday, disrupting online state public services, officials said.
The network, Saeol, has become inaccessible since 8:40 a.m. Friday, halting municipal government document services, according to the Ministry of Interior and Safety.
The government’s online civil service portal, Government24, also went down later in the day, leading to an unprecedented situation where all services of government-issued certificates and documents to the public became paralyzed.
The disruption has reportedly been caused by an error in the authentication process in accessing Saeol.
Some 100 network equipment company officials and public officials have been attempting to fix the issue at the National Information Resources Service in Daejeon, 139 kilometers south of Seoul, where the interior ministry’s network servers are located.
On Saturday, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo convened a meeting of relevant agencies to discuss response measures, apologized over the service disruptions and vowed to make all-out efforts for the recovery, according to his office.
“I apologize over the inconvenience and confusion experienced by the public from the halt to civil services of public agencies,” Han said. “We are making all-out recovery efforts with private sector experts, and we will do our best for a swift normalization.”
President Yoon Suk Yeol ordered Friday the creation of a task force to handle the breakdown of the government’s online civil service portal. Yoon is currently in San Francisco, where he is attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.
Source: Yonhap News Agency