Errors Occurred Day Before System Crash... "Disadvantage to Those Who Applied on Time"

[Anchor]

Applications for relief have begun today (September 14) for test-takers who suffered damages due to system errors while submitting their early college applications. It has been confirmed, however, that a similar error occurred the night before the system outage.

Reporter Jo Yoon-ha has the details.

[Reporter]

The server outage at UwayApply, a private agency handling early college applications, occurred at around 5:50 PM last Friday, 10 minutes before the application deadline.

With access and payments completely blocked, the Korean Council for University Education urgently extended the deadline by one hour.

It has been found, however, that site access was also temporarily blocked the night before, 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 effectively means there were warning signs, but they were not properly addressed.

Uway explained that a new program was installed to obtain Information Security Management System certification, and an error may have occurred during the process of upgrading this program.

About 1,200 test-takers were unable to properly submit their applications due to the server outage.

The Ministry of Education is accepting relief applications for three days starting today.

The eligible applicants are those who logged in before the outage occurred and have records of attempting to save or pay for their applications during the outage.

The problem is that some universities released their competition rates after 6:00 PM, which was the originally scheduled application deadline.

Some test-takers may have submitted their applications during the extended deadline after checking the competition rates.

[High School Senior Test-Taker: If students who applied after the early application period later affect my competition rate, I think that would be a huge blow....]

[Test-Taker Parent: I think it is an insult to the diligent students who submitted on time. Students who hesitated until the very last minute are actually getting more benefits, and I wonder if this is really fair.]

Test-takers who intended to apply near the original deadline but could not access the site were excluded from this relief effort.

It was revealed that some test-takers did not log in until after the error occurred, but submitted their applications during the extended deadline after the server was restored.

In the past, universities handled applications independently, but since 1997, private agencies have taken over the application process. The Ministry of Education stated that it will conduct a comprehensive inspection of the application agency system and prepare improvement measures.

(Video by Lee Chan-su | Video Editing by Park Na-young | VJ: Shin So-young)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.