Did the government deliberately shut down various government websites so that it could rig future elections? No, that's not true: Four government-administered websites were disrupted or shut down during an eight-day period in November for different technical reasons.
The claim appeared in a TikTok video (archived here) published by @mmm33618863 on November 25, 2023, with the caption (translated from Korean to English by Lead Stories staff):
It is really strange, that while President Yoon Suk-yeol is abroad, four major disruptions of the e-government system/service happened and the government is calling for countermeasures.
The possible scenario with system disruption is taking out the roaster of some voters and fabricating it. They can use hacking tools, compare vote records and ID systems, mark the people who did not vote in previous elections, and make up their vote information in advance. With this process they can conduct additional voting, favoring their side.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Dec 19 02:02:32 2023 UTC)
The Ministry of the Interior and Safety, responsible for the management of government organizations and e-government facilities, reported the causes of the disruptions were of a technical nature.
On November 17, 2023, the regional e-government service "Saeol" and national service "Jeongbu24," responsible for public access to state-approved documents such as birth certificates and resident registration documents, was shut down due to a verification system error. The national system involved in issuing Identification documents was disrupted on November 22, 2023, and a national e-procurement system was disrupted on November 23, 2023, due to overwhelming traffic. On November 24, 2023, a government site that issues mobile national identification cards was shut down due to storage setting error.
