Gov't administrative network down for 2nd day; recovery efforts under way

A notice is posted at the entrance of a local government office in Seoul on Friday morning, when the administrative computer network of local governments across the country was disrupted. (Yonhap)

The government's online civil service portal temporarily resumed operations Saturday after experiencing a major outage, officials said, although disruptions to the government's administrative computer network persist.

The Saeol administrative network used by public workers went down on Friday morning, followed by a suspension of the online portal, Government 24.

The outage caused an unprecedented halt to all services of issuing government certificates and civil documents.

On Saturday, the interior ministry said it has temporarily restored the online service after conducting multiple examinations. The portal has become available as of 10 a.m.

The disruption has reportedly been caused by an error in the authentication process in accessing Saeol, although the exact cause remains unknown.

Some 100 network equipment company officials and public officials have been attempting to fix the issue at the National Information Resources Service in Daejeon, 139 kilometers south of Seoul, where the interior ministry's network servers are located.

The Saeol system has yet to return to normal operations, and the ministry plans to focus efforts on resolving the issue over the weekend.

Prime Minister Han Duck-soo convened a meeting of relevant agencies to discuss response measures, apologized over the service disruptions and vowed to make all-out efforts for the recovery, according to his office.

"I apologize over the inconvenience and confusion experienced by the public from the halt to civil services of public agencies," Han said. "We are making all-out recovery efforts with private sector experts, and we will do our best for a swift normalization."

President Yoon Suk Yeol ordered Friday the creation of a task force to handle the breakdown of the government's online civil service portal. Yoon was in San Francisco, where he was attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

Interior Minister Lee Sang-min, who cut short his work trip to the United States to deal with the network paralysis, will return home later Saturday to preside over a meeting to discuss response measures. (Yonhap)