Lax mgmt. of available electricity caused outages: experts

Power outages that hit the nation Thursday were a man-made disaster caused by lack of government control.

Though the blackouts affected 1,620,000 regions nationwide, the government failed to release basic data on the cause while releasing information on power reserves differently every hour.

The Korea Power Exchange said it informed the Knowledge Economy Ministry of the temporary shutdown of power plants, but the ministry denied this. The ministry also refused to disclose detailed power reserves data.

Certain experts said the blackouts were caused by lax management of electricity that the Korea Power Exchange can supply. With the power volume the Korea Power Exchange reports to the ministry less than the electricity that can be supplied, the ministry failed to monitor supply and demand appropriately, they said.

Main opposition Democratic Party Rep. Kim Young-hwan, who chairs the parliamentary committee on knowledge economy, said Friday at a parliamentary inspection of the administration, "Of the electricity that the Korea Power Exchange supplies, 1.17 million kilowatts cannot be used in reality."

"The country was on the verge of a nationwide massive blackout with a meager 310,000 kilowatts of electricity actually available for delivery at 3 p.m. Thursday."

Korea Power Exchange President Yeom Myong-chun told reporters Friday, "Power outages yesterday were not caused by a monitoring failure. They are the outcome of our preemptive action taken under a technical judgment to respond to abnormal weather patterns," adding, "No violation of manuals was committed."

mint4a@donga.com