A total of 354 applications from students affected by the crash of the online application system for South Korea's 2027 early admissions cycle have been restored, education authorities said. At the same time, regulators recommended that universities cancel three applications filed after the applicants had checked competition ratios disclosed during the extended filing window created by the outage.
The Ministry of Education said on the 17th that it had reviewed 1,588 requests for relief tied to the system failure at Uway Apply and recognized 414 as eligible. Of those, 354 involved students who went on to complete their applications and were ultimately granted relief.
Eligibility was determined based on electronic records from 5:50 p.m. on the 11th, when the failure occurred. Additional filing was allowed only where an error record remained and where the applicant was confirmed to have drafted, saved or submitted an application for the relevant track, or attempted payment. Of the 116 universities whose deadlines had been set for 6 p.m. that day, 16 did not extend their deadlines, leaving applicants who were unable to file because of the outage without a separate opportunity.
The 354 restored applications covered 306 admissions units and tracks across 40 universities. Kyungpook National University had the most at 72, followed by Kyung Hee University with 51, Chung-Ang University with 48, Chonnam National University with 27, Kookmin University with 26 and Inha University with 18. Average competition ratios at those universities edged up to 9.635 to 1 from 9.634 to 1 after the additional applications were counted.
The complication was that some universities that extended their filing hours because of the outage disclosed competition ratios before the deadline. Of the 100 universities that pushed their deadlines back to 7 p.m., 17 disclosed the ratios during the extended period. A total of 39 applications were filed at those universities afterward, and electronic records confirmed that in three cases the applicant had looked up the final competition ratio before filing. The ministry and the Korean Council for University Education concluded that the three cases risked undermining fairness for other applicants and the integrity of the admissions process, and recommended that the universities involved cancel them.
The ministry and the council have formed a special investigation team and are conducting an on-site inspection of Uway Apply through the 23rd. They also plan to review measures to strengthen the stability and oversight of the application system starting with the 2027 regular admissions cycle, and over the longer term to reorganize it into a publicly run application system.
"We decided on relief and cancellations on the basis of objective electronic data," a ministry official said. "There were limits to resolving fairness concerns in every individual case, so we will improve the system to prevent the same problem from recurring."
