A large fire devastated one of South Korea’s main telecom companies Saturday, affecting millions of users
Residents in Seoul discovered how fragile their telecommunications system was this past weekend when a fire disrupted service for millions. The government and the provider vowed to implement changes to avoid a repeat of the event, but the system failure demonstrated a need for greater redundancy and preparation for future natural and technological disasters.
The fire affected customers of KT, the nation’s second largest telecommunications company. They found themselves unable to make calls, access the internet, complete ATM or credit card transactions, and watch television. Local media also reported an elderly woman died when she fell ill and her husband wasn’t able to reach emergency services during the service outage.
Lee Manjong, chairman of the Korean Association for Terrorism Studies and professor of the department of Law & Police at Howon University, told VOA that while it is nearly impossible to prevent widespread system outages, certain steps can be taken to avoid catastrophic failures.
“It is necessary to split the public safety net (fire, medical, and police emergency services) and make system backups (redundancies) compulsory,” he said.
Following the blaze, South Korea’s minister of Science and ICT (Information, Communications, and Technology), You Young-min, spoke to the CEOs of South Korea’s three major communication companies (SK Telecom, KT, and LG U+) to discuss their backup plans.
You said the companies “need to swiftly change their contract clauses on compensation issues and also need to come up with plans that would reroute traffic if such accidents, which shouldn’t happen again, happen.
