[Anchor]
Applications for relief have begun for college applicants who suffered damages due to the system outage during the early admissions application process. However, it has been confirmed that a similar error occurred the night before the system failure, intensifying controversies surrounding relief and fairness.
Reporter Jo Yoon-ha has the story.
[Reporter]
The server outage at 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 has been found that temporary site access issues also occurred the previous night on Thursday.
UwayApply stated, "We were monitoring the situation because of the server glitch on Thursday," adding, "Because the error occurred right before Friday's deadline, there was not enough time to take action."
This means that despite early warning signs, proper responses were not made.
Uway explained that a new program had been installed to obtain information protection management system certification, and errors may have occurred during the process of upgrading this program.
Around 1,200 applicants were unable to properly submit their applications due to the server outage.
The Ministry of Education has been accepting relief applications for three days starting yesterday (the 14th).
The eligible targets are applicants who logged in before the outage occurred and have records of attempting to save or pay for applications during the outage period.
The problem is that some universities disclosed their competition rates after 6:00 PM, the originally scheduled deadline.
Some applicants may have applied during the extended deadline after checking the competition rates.
[High School Senior Applicant: If kids who applied later during the extended early admissions period affect my competition rate, I think that would be such a huge blow….]
[Applicant's Parent: I think it's an insult to the diligent kids who submitted on time. Those who dragged their feet until the very end are actually getting more benefits now, and I wonder if this is truly fair.]
Applicants who initially tried to apply near the deadline but could not access the site were excluded from this relief measure.
It was revealed that some applicants who had not logged in prior to the error period submitted their applications during the extended deadline after the server was restored.
In the past, universities handled applications independently, but private agencies have taken over the process since 1997. The Ministry of Education stated that it will comprehensively inspect the application agency system and prepare improvement measures.
(Video Reported by Lee Chan-soo | Video Edited by Park Na-young | VJ: Shin So-young)
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