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Foreign and domestic banks in Korea, news and government services ground to a halt on Wednesday after a powerful earthquake that hit Taiwan the previous night cut off six undersea fiberoptic cables linking Taiwan and Korea. The Ministry of Information and Communication said the earthquake damaged a total of 9,985 communication lines including 9,871 ordinary call lines, 92 dedicated lines and 33 Internet lines. Ordinary call and Internet lines were reconnected via a third country but dedicated lines directly linking Taiwan and Korea were down.
The dedicated lines are used by 27 companies including Korea Exchange Bank, Kookmin Bank, foreign banks, the Foreign Ministry and Reuters. Citibank Korea and the domestic offices of HSBC and Bank of America are suffering serious disruptions to their operations. "The majority of foreign bank branches here have their servers in Hong Kong and Singapore and their operations come to a complete stop when they can¡¯t receive information from their overseas servers,¡± an official with the Financial Supervisory Service said. Citibank Korea stopped branch, ATM and Internet banking services from 10:50 a.m. and temporarily used post office branches to allow customers to deposit and withdraw money. HSBC's branches in Seoul stopped branch and online banking services. Kookmin Bank, KEB and other domestic banks partially halted foreign exchange services as terminals of foreign information providers such as Reuters stopped services due to the earthquake.
Korea Telecom and Dacom are working with AT&T and Singapore Telecom, who are in charge of building undersea cables, to repair their dedicated lines as quickly as possible. A staffer with KT said it will take a month to completely repair the damaged lines as the earthquake changed undersea geographical features.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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