Pregnant women and households with dual earners or multiple children overwhelmed the site on the first day applications opened for the Seoul Household Service, crashing the system.
Seoul City said it began accepting applications at 9 a.m. on the 30th through the Birth & Childcare All-in-One Portal, but repeated errors forced the city to block new submissions at 3:30 p.m.
The Seoul Household Service dispatches a home-care worker to a household to help with cleaning, dishwashing and laundry.
The city provides an annual voucher worth 700,000 KRW (about $525) so pregnant women and dual-income or multiple-child households with incomes at or below 180% of the median can use the service.
Until last year, applications were handled through the Seoul Mom Care System, but this year Seoul consolidated the application window on the Birth & Childcare All-in-One Portal. The city says that consolidation overloaded the server and caused the errors.
A Seoul official said, \"We believe the system experienced a temporary outage after users tried to access it all at once. We plan to restore the server and resume accepting applications by 10 a.m. on the 31st.\"
The Birth & Childcare All-in-One Portal is a Seoul-run platform that provides information and support for marriage, pregnancy, childbirth and child care. Since February, the city has collected policy information from central ministries and district offices on this platform and centralized application windows there.
The unstable operation of the city's family policy system inconvenienced users and drew criticism from political circles.
Jeong Won-oh, the Democratic Party's candidate for Seoul mayor, said in a statement, \"Failing to even forecast demand for an administrative service that directly affects citizens' lives amounts to dereliction of duty. The city has prioritized showy promotion while neglecting the service details that citizens actually experience.\"
