[Anchor]
The process of accepting relief applications for college applicants who suffered damages due to system errors during the early admissions application process began today, Monday, September 14. However, it has been confirmed that a similar error occurred the night before the system breakdown.
Reporter Jo Yoon-ha has the details.
[Reporter]
The breakdown in the server of UwayApply, a private agency handling college early admissions applications, occurred around 5:50 PM last Friday, 10 minutes before the application deadline.
Access and payments were completely blocked, prompting the Korean Council for University Education to urgently extend the deadline by one hour.
However, it was found that temporary site access issues also occurred the night before on Thursday.
UwayApply stated, "We were monitoring the situation due to the server disruption on Thursday," adding, "Because the error occurred right before Friday's deadline, there was not enough time to take action."
In effect, warning signs were present, but adequate responses were not made.
Uway explained that a new program was installed to obtain an information security management system certification, and an error may have occurred during the process of upgrading this program.
Up to about 1,200 applicants failed to properly submit their applications due to the server outage.
The Ministry of Education has been accepting relief applications for three days starting today.
The targets are applicants who logged in before the disruption occurred and have records of attempting to save applications or make payments during the outage period.
The problem is that some universities disclosed their competition rates after 6:00 PM, which was the originally scheduled application deadline.
Some applicants may have submitted their applications during the extended deadline after checking these competition rates.
[High School Senior Applicant: If students who applied later after the early admissions period affect my competition rate, I think that would be a huge blow….]
[Applicant's Parent: I think it's an insult to the diligent students who applied on time. Students who hesitated until the very end are actually benefiting more now, and I question whether this is truly fair.]
Applicants who originally intended to apply close to the deadline but could not access the site were excluded from this relief measure.
It was revealed that some applicants who did not log in before the error time instead submitted their applications during the extended deadline after the server was restored.
In the past, universities handled applications independently, but private agencies have been taking over the process since 1997. The Ministry of Education announced that it will conduct a comprehensive inspection of the application agency system and prepare improvement measures.
(Photo: Yonhap News)
Reported by Lee Chan-soo | Video by Park Na-young | VJ by Shin So-young
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