Relief for 1,200 Applicants Unable to Submit Applications Due to Admissions System Outage... Only 5:50 p.m. Records Recognized

[Financial News] A relief procedure began on Sept. 14 for approximately 1,200 applicants who were unable to complete their applications because of a system outage that occurred just before the deadline for early university admissions applications for the 2027 academic year. The Ministry of Education decided to recognize only one record—the final application-writing record from 5:50 p.m., when the outage occurred.
According to the Ministry of Education, UwayApply, the application-submission agency, will accept relief applications from 9 a.m. on Sept. 14 until 6 p.m. on Sept. 16. As applications are submitted, it will check access and application-writing records in real time, determine whether applicants qualify for relief, and complete individual submissions by 10 p.m. on Sept. 16.
Eligible applicants are those who accessed the system and had a record of writing and saving an application or attempting payment when the access outage occurred at 5:50 p.m. on Sept. 11. The Ministry of Education and the Korean Council for University Education (KCUE) extended the deadline to 7 p.m., but approximately 1,200 applicants were ultimately unable to complete their submissions. Applicants with no access record at 5:50 p.m. will not qualify for relief.
Applicants must submit relief requests themselves. An official from the Ministry of Education explained, "Some of the approximately 1,200 applicants submitted applications through another agency after the outage, and we also need to confirm whether they actually intended to apply, so we chose an individual application process." Once a request is received, the applicant’s access and application-writing records will be checked to determine eligibility for relief.
Even if applicants had saved applications for multiple universities, relief will be available for only one application: the final application-writing record remaining at 5:50 p.m. This criterion is intended to prevent applicants from choosing their preferred university among multiple applications after competition rates were disclosed following the outage. An official from the Ministry of Education said, "We are providing relief by recognizing the applicants’ original intentions as reflected in the applications they were working on when the outage occurred."
A measure was also prepared for applicants who used another application-submission agency because of the server outage. If an application record for the university they originally intended to apply to remains on UwayApply, but they applied to another university through Jinhak after the outage, they may cancel the original Jinhak payment and change their submission to the university they initially intended to apply to.
All 113 universities that had planned to close applications at 6 p.m. extended the deadline by one hour, to 7 p.m. Both UwayApply and Jinhak extended their submission windows, and the extension was announced through a KCUE press release, pop-up notices on the agencies’ systems, university-specific announcements, and notification messages. There was also speculation that some applicants may not have known about the extension because they did not see the notification messages or pop-ups.
An official from the Ministry of Education said, "Separately from the relief procedure, we are also investigating cases in which applicants submitted new applications to universities that had disclosed competition rates during the extended deadline, without any prior submission record." The authorities will compare access and application-writing records from both agencies to determine whether the applications were genuinely new submissions or whether the applicants moved to Jinhak because they were unable to submit through UwayApply due to the server outage. The official added, "If the investigation confirms an unfair case, we will consult with the universities and KCUE and even consider whether the application should be invalidated."
The exact cause of the outage has not yet been confirmed. The Ministry of Education plans to investigate, together with KCUE, the cause of the disruptions across the UwayApply and Jinhak systems and whether the response measures taken at the time were appropriate. It will also consider including measures related to the disclosure of competition rates during an outage in its manual, as well as possible system improvements. The relief procedure is expected to be completed without affecting the universities’ early-admissions schedules.

[email protected] Man-ki Kim Reporter