Fewer than 1,200 applicants to qualify for relief after university application outage

A system outage that disrupted applications for South Korea’s highly competitive early university admissions process has raised fresh concerns about fairness, with education authorities warning that far fewer than the roughly 1,200 initially affected applicants may qualify for relief.

Education authorities said late Tuesday that they would apply “strict eligibility standards” to prevent unfair treatment in the admissions process.

The Ministry of Education and the Korean Council for University Education said relief would be provided only to applicants whose inability to complete their applications can be verified through objective computer records.

To qualify, applicants must have an error log recorded when the system disruption began at around 5:50 p.m. Friday, as well as a record showing that they attempted to apply to the university for which they are seeking relief.

Qualifying records may include evidence that an applicant started or saved an application, attempted to submit it or tried to make a payment.

If records show that an applicant worked on applications to multiple universities, only the application most recently worked on will be considered for relief.

Officials initially estimated that about 1,200 applicants had been unable to submit their applications, even after the deadline was extended by one hour following the outage. However, the ministry said the actual number of applicants receiving relief is expected to fall once the eligibility criteria are strictly applied.

The outage affected Uway Apply, one of Korea’s two major university application platforms, at around 5:50 p.m. Friday -- just 10 minutes before the 6 p.m. deadline for the 2027 early admissions cycle. The deadline was subsequently extended to 7 p.m.

South Korea’s early admissions process is highly competitive, and students are limited to six applications. As a result, the outage and the subsequent deadline extension raised concerns about whether some applicants were placed at a disadvantage or gained an unfair advantage.

Education authorities are also examining a separate fairness concern involving applicants who submitted applications during the extended period, after universities had already disclosed their competition rates.

The ministry said 17 universities that extended their application deadlines had publicly disclosed their competition rates at the original deadline.

Concerns were raised that this could give applicants who had not yet completed their submissions an opportunity to see which university programs were more or less competitive before deciding where to apply.

Because applicants are limited to six applications during the early admissions cycle, those who saw the competition rates could have redirected an application to a less competitive option.

The ministry said it is reviewing applications submitted to those universities after the competition rates were made public. It will consult with the universities on possible measures, including invalidating applications if authorities determine that they were submitted under unfair circumstances.