Telecom carriers brace for traffic surge ahead of impeachment vote

Korea’s network and mobile service providers have stepped up their emergency preparedness ahead of Saturday’s impeachment vote against President Yoon Suk Yeol, according to industry sources Thursday.

The top three telecom carriers -- SK Telecom, KT Corp. and LG Uplus -- are taking measures to prevent service malfunctions, including increasing network capacity in areas where large crowds are expected to gather for rallies in Seoul.

During the first impeachment vote on Dec. 7, massive rallies near the National Assembly in Yeouido, western Seoul, led to communication network disruptions. This week’s impeachment is expected to draw even larger crowds.

The three companies temporarily installed additional network stations during last week’s rallies, but they say they struggled to predict the exact number due to huge discrepancies in the figures offered by police and the organizing committee.

For Saturday’s Yeouido rally, police estimated about 100,000 people to have joined, while the organizing committee claimed more than 1 million people.

This week, the carriers plan to install 36 temporary network stations. Of the total, 29 will be set up in Yeouido, while Gwanghwamun and Yongsan will have six and one, respectively. Thirty-nine supplementary stations will be installed near the National Assembly.

In the meantime, Naver and Kakao, the nation’s top two internet companies, have also boosted server capacity and enhanced traffic monitoring. Their users suffered service malfunctions for hours due to a spike in traffic after President Yoon issued a short-lived martial law decree on Dec. 3.

According to market tracker Mobile Index, KakaoTalk, the top mobile messenger app, saw its average daily use time per person surge from 23.33 minutes on Dec. 1 to 34.44 minutes on Dec. 3. During the same period, new installations of encrypted messaging app Telegram soared from 1.17 million to 1.52 million, over concerns of possible media censorship following the martial law fiasco.