Firefighters work to put out a fire at KT Corp.’s building in the Ahyeon district, central Seoul, on Nov. 24, 2018. (Yonhap
SEOUL, Nov. 26 (Korea Bizwire) — A fire that broke out at KT Corp.’s Ahyeon branch on Saturday created havoc in the Seodaemun and Mapo districts, leaving the area’s smartphone users without Internet access for hours.
Large masses of the population have become heavily reliant on their phones for not only calls and messages but for e-commerce transactions, navigation, and music streaming among many other functions.
One student who had planned to meet his father after a graduate school interview had a hard time tracking his father down as phone calls from his mobile phone were impossible.
Private business owners, however, were affected on a larger scale.
One café owner in Mapo district said that he had to send customers away because credit card payments couldn’t be processed and ATMs had broken down.
Hospitals were equally inconvenienced by the breakdown as many rely on the Internet for their operations.
One medical professional took to Twitter to post a message that stated that the hospital was continuously paging doctors via its speakers as mobile phones using the KT network were unable to be used.
The breakdown also made it impossible for citizens to file police reports. Long lines formed at public phone booths as many KT subscribers were left without functioning mobile phones.
H. S. Seo (hsseo@koreabizwire.com)
