South Korea's Ministry of Education has approved 388 applicants for relief measures after a system outage disrupted early-admission applications for the 2027 academic year. The number is expected to rise once reviews of 188 remaining cases are completed.
The ministry reached the decision after reviewing 1,400 of the 1,588 relief requests received by 6 p.m. on the 16th. Applications for relief were accepted over three days starting at 9 a.m. on the 14th. The ministry and the Korean Council for University Education screened eligible applicants based on login records and application histories from the time of the system failure.
Those approved for relief were allowed to submit applications to the relevant universities until 10 p.m. that day. As of 6 p.m., 250 had completed their submissions. The figure falls far short of the up to about 1,200 applicants the ministry had initially estimated were unable to file.
The disruption began at about 5:50 p.m. on the 11th, when an error occurred in the Uway Apply application system, leaving some test-takers unable to complete their applications and payments. The council pushed back the filing deadline by an hour, from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m., but confusion widened as many applicants were unaware of the extension.
Despite the relief measures, students and parents continue to push back. Some are calling for the measures to be withdrawn, saying the information gap created by the deadline extension undermined fairness in the admissions process. They are organizing rallies through online communities and preparing administrative litigation.
Meanwhile, Education Minister Choi Kyo-jin told a plenary session of the National Assembly's Education Committee that day that "there will be no case in which applicants who filed earlier are disadvantaged."
