Chaos erupts as government service systems crash nationwide

Social Affairs

Published: 17 Nov. 2023, 17:29 Updated: 17 Nov. 2023, 18:25

Chaos erupts as government service systems crash nationwide

Notices of a system crash posted on an automated civil service machine at a district office in Seoul on Friday. Many people had trouble printing out government documents that were necessary in applying for loans and event library cards. [YONHAP]

Chaos erupted as people struggled to print out government documents that were necessary to apply for loans, and even public library cards, as the government’s civil service system crashed on Friday.

A 65 year-old man, who identified himself as Jaegal, was stonewalled at an administrative welfare office in Myeonmok-dong, Jungnang District, eastern, Seoul, when trying to get the necessary documents to apply for a loan.

Network crash shuts down civil services nationwide

He kept asking the government employee if he could get his residential ID record within the day, but even the employees didn't know when their system would return to working order.

“The Ministry of the Interior and Safety haven’t told anyone anything,” said the public office employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “The system only has a message that says that there is an error in the networking system.”

A woman in her 30s was stuck at the administrative welfare center in Busan while trying to get a family relation certificate so she could apply for a public library card for her child.

“I tried to print the certification from my computer, but the Government24 website kept crashing,” said the woman, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. “That’s why I came down here. And still I have to wait, as they told me they can’t.”

Another person in Gwangju was unable to procure the necessary documents for a housing contract he was signing onto.

“Because tomorrow is Saturday, I had to get the documents today,” the person said. “I was told that the process was simple and easy.”

A woman in her 40s in Daejeon kept asking public servants when she would be able to get important documents for a trial.

While others left after seeing little hope of the system being restored anytime soon, some continued to wait.

The government said that bugs in the public servant verification system cropped up as server equipment was upgraded on Thursday.

Thirty minutes of server swapping was supposed to restore the system around noon. Government systems were temporarily functional in some areas following the swaps. The errors recurred, however, around 1 p.m.

“Some of the employees skipped lunch when the system was briefly restored for 50 minutes,” said an administrative welfare center official in Daejeon.

Although the civil service shutdown has been attributed to a network failure, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety has yet to disclose the reasons behind that network failure.

The entire system is operated by the National Information Resources Service, whose servers are located in Daejeon.

BY MOON HEE-CHUL, LEE HO-JEONG [lee.hojeong@joongang.co.kr]