Seoul: Local tax services were normalized Wednesday after about a 12-hour system glitch that partially disrupted an online local tax system, the interior ministry said.
According to Yonhap News Agency, the Standard Local Tax System, an internal network used by local officials, was disrupted due to a sudden surge in data traffic during the process of updating the system in time for Wednesday's launch of new local governments elected in the June 3 local elections. This unexpected surge in data traffic resulted in significant disruptions, leading to outages of WeTax, an online tax service site, alongside automated administration kiosks and the Gov24 portal.
WeTax was particularly affected, as it was scheduled to resume operations at 8 a.m. following two scheduled suspensions intended to reflect changes related to the local elections. However, the site failed to resume as planned, causing further inconvenience to users.
The interior ministry confirmed that local tax services, including tax payments, had been fully restored as of around 8:50 p.m. on Wednesday. To accommodate for the disruption, the ministry has extended the deadline for all local tax filings and payments to Friday, covering those whose original deadlines fell between last Friday and this Thursday.