Damaged underseas data cable snarls operations of wired Korea

Many of Korea’s telecommunications firms and banks affected by an earthquake off Taiwan on Tuesday night were back in normal operation by yesterday afternoon. The quake reportedly damaged an underseas communications cable. But a few companies are still struggling with unreliable network connections, and the Korean units of HSBC and Citigroup Inc. are scrambling to soothe angry customers who were unable to get into their Internet banking systems during the two-day-long outage. KT Corp., Korea’s largest fixed-line phone and broadband Internet service provider, said yesterday that services on 92 leased lines were shut down because of the earthquake; 12 lines were back in operation by late Wednesday. Those leased lines carry point-to-point communications rather than switched services with dial-up numbers or addresses. These lines can be used for telephone, data transfer and high-speed Internet service. The electronic systems using those 12 lines ― Kookmin Bank, Posdata and Samsung Networks ― instantly returned to normal operation when the lines were restored. KT said that these lines were not directly affected by the earthquake, but from a secondary problem involving power amplifiers in the cables that the original cable loss triggered. The other 80 lines were in that original cable and will require at least two weeks to repair, KT said. About 20 lines used by the Korea Exchange Bank, LG CNS, and the Foreign Ministry were rerouted through cables in China, and 17 used by Met Life, Reuters, Kookmin Bank and the Foreign Ministry were switched to satellite connections. KT said that it was negotiating with telecommunications companies in neighboring countries to set up alternate routes for the remaining lines. Yesterday afternoon, the company said that it believed it would restore service on 90 percent of its Internet connections by the end of the day. Twenty-six leased lines used by LG Dacom were damaged, the company said, and half had been restored by yesterday morning, rerouted through land cables via Hong Kong. It predicted 80 percent would be restored by last night. Hanarotelecom, which had four leased lines shut down, brought one back into service Wednesday and two more yesterday. Most online systems of the Korean units of HSBC and Citigroup Inc. returned to normal operation yesterday afternoon. Automated teller machines and other online systems at HSBC branches were working normally, HSBC said in a statement. But the bank’s Web site is still experiencing disruption, making it hard for customers to bank online. The Web site of HSBC Korea was up but extremely slow late yesterday afternoon. Citibank Korea Inc., another foreign bank affected by the cable problem, said its operations were back to normal yesterday afternoon. HSBC said it would consider reimbursements to customers who can document financial damage caused by the operational disruption. Citibank said it would offer a several-day extension to customers who failed to make credit card or loan payments on time because of the problems. by Jung Ha-won, Wohn Dong-hee