Power outage affects 155,000 households in South Korea
A massive power outage hit the southeastern industrial city of Ulsan on Wednesday, leaving around 155,000 households without electricity for about two hours.
Image for illustration purposes.
South Korea, Ulsan: A massive power outage hit the southeastern industrial city of Ulsan on Wednesday, leaving around 155,000 households without electricity for about two hours.
The blackout occurred at around 3:37 p.m. in a southern residential district of Ulsan, about 300 km southeast of Seoul, due to a malfunctioning substation, according to the industry ministry and the state-run utility Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO). It was the country’s largest power outage since 2017, when some 200,000 households in the greater Seoul area were hit by a blackout.
“The power outage was caused by a malfunctioning switch isolator at the substation,” a KEPCO official said, noting it was trying to determine the cause of the accident.
KEPCO said it has fully resumed operation of the substation after restoring power to the affected households at around 5:25 p.m. The outage plunged the residential district into chaos, leaving people trapped in elevators and causing traffic lights to go dark. Many households, supermarkets, shops and hospitals were hit hard, but officials say that cases of severe damage from a nearby industrial complex have yet to reported.
Industry Minister Bang Moon-kyu convened an emergency meeting of related officials and called for an investigation into the cause and countermeasures. KEPCO said it will make efforts to secure a stable supply of electricity in the future by thoroughly managing its facilities.
Source: Yonhap News Agency
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