Lee rebukes electricity officials over nationwide blackouts

SEOUL, Sept. 16 (Yonhap) -- President Lee Myung-bak rebuked electricity officials Friday over the previous day's nationwide blackouts as an investigation has found that a wrong demand forecast was mainly to blame for the unprecedented accident, officials said.
South Korea suffered extensive power outages Thursday as unseasonably high temperatures pushed up electricity demand. About 1.62 million households across the country had experienced temporary blackouts before the service returned to normal about five hours later.
On Friday, Lee visited the state-run Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) in southern Seoul and ordered officials to come up with thorough measures to ensure such an incident won't happen again. In particular, Lee rebuked officials for making a wrong prediction of power demand, aides said.
Meanwhile, a local Internet security firm, Cuvpia, claimed that hackers could have tampered with the KEPCO's computer system to cause the blackouts.
But the KEPCO dismissed the possibility, saying its investigation has found that the outages have nothing to do with hacking.