University application system crash draws apologies from KCUE, Uwayapply

The Korean Council for University Education and university application agency Uwayapply both issued apologies Monday over a system failure that disrupted the early admissions application process for the 2027 academic year.

Uwayapply said a bug introduced during a security update caused the outage.

KCUE Chairman Lee Ki-jung and Uwayapply CEO Sung Yoon-seok held a joint press conference Monday afternoon at the council's office in Geumcheon-gu, Seoul.

"I feel deeply sorry when I think of the anxiety and confusion that students and parents who have spent so long preparing for university entrance must have experienced at the very last moment of the application period," Lee said.

He said the council would work with the affected universities to establish "a reasonable and fair relief process" for students who were unable to complete their applications, based on verified facts and available documentation.

"Above all, our top priority will be ensuring that no student suffers any unjust disadvantage as a result of this system failure," he said.

Lee also pledged a thorough review of the application system's stability and emergency response procedures. He said the council would "work closely with the Ministry of Education to improve the overall application system, including any areas requiring institutional or structural reform."

Sung also offered an apology, saying he was "sincerely sorry to students, parents and university officials."

He said the company was "taking this incident very seriously" and would do its utmost to prevent a recurrence, including a thorough investigation into the cause and an upgrade of its emergency response framework.

A company official at the press conference said the outage that occurred Friday had been traced to "a minor bug found after carrying out security management and other upgrades," adding that web traffic had also increased about 30 percent compared with the previous year.

The official acknowledged that a separate system failure had also occurred on the night of Thursday — the day before the application deadline. The company had been unable to fully analyze and resolve the issue in time. "It seems our response was inadequate," the official said.

According to KCUE, 302 students had applied for relief as of noon Monday, the first day the relief process was open.