1,200 College Applicants to Receive Relief After Application System Disruption; Education Ministry and KCUE Consider Direct Management

[Financial News] Relief procedures began on Sept. 14 for about 1,200 applicants who were unable to complete their applications because of a system disruption just before the deadline for the 2027 early-admission application period. The Ministry of Education decided that even if applicants had prepared applications for multiple universities when the disruption occurred at 5:50 p.m., only the one application record most recently remaining in the system at that time would be eligible for relief. The incident has also prompted consideration of having the Ministry of Education or the Korean Council for University Education (KCUE) directly manage the college application submission system, which has been operated by private companies.
According to the Ministry of Education, UwayApply, an application-submission agency, will accept relief applications from affected applicants from 9 a.m. on Sept. 14 through 6 p.m. on Sept. 16. It plans to review access and application-drafting records as applications are submitted, determine eligibility for relief, and complete individual submissions by 10 p.m. on Sept. 16.
Applicants eligible for relief are those who accessed the system during the disruption at 5:50 p.m. on Sept. 11 and had a record of drafting and saving an application or attempting payment. The Ministry of Education and KCUE extended the deadline to 7 p.m., but about 1,200 applicants ultimately failed to complete their submissions. Applicants with no access record at the time will be excluded from relief.
Even if applicants had saved applications for multiple universities, only the one application-drafting record most recently remaining at 5:50 p.m. will be recognized. The rule is intended to prevent applicants from choosing their preferred university among multiple applications after competition rates had been disclosed following the disruption.
Applicants who used a different application-submission agency because of the server disruption may also qualify for relief if electronic records remain. If an application-drafting record for the university an applicant originally intended to apply to remains on UwayApply, while the applicant applied to another university through JinhakApply after the disruption, the applicant may cancel the original JinhakApply payment and change the submission to the initially intended university.
Asked during an interpellation session on education, society and culture at the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea, Education Minister Choi Kyo-jin said the government would consider having the Ministry of Education or KCUE directly manage the application submission system. "Given that this unexpected and unfortunate incident has occurred, we will actively consider the proposal," he said. College applications are currently handled by private companies, including UwayApply and JinhakApply, under individual contracts with universities.
All 113 universities that had planned to close applications at 6 p.m. extended the deadline by one hour to 7 p.m. However, some universities disclosed their competition rates at the original 6 p.m. deadline, raising concerns about fairness because applicants who submitted afterward could check the rates before applying. The Ministry of Education is cross-checking access and drafting records from each agency to determine whether submissions were genuinely new applications or cases in which applicants switched agencies because of the disruption.
KCUE said, "We apologize to applicants and their parents for this disruption and will inspect the application submission system and our response procedures." UwayApply also apologized for the server error, saying it would identify the cause and further strengthen its emergency response system.

[email protected] Man-ki Kim Reporter