Lee rebukes electricity officials over nationwide blackouts

SEOUL, Sept. 16 (Yonhap) -- An angry President Lee Myung-bak harshly 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 2.12 million households across the country had experienced temporary blackouts before the service returned to normal about five hours later.
The Ministry of Knowledge Economy, which handles energy affairs, said the accident was largely caused by unexpectedly high demand while many of the country's power plants, including nuclear reactors, were temporarily shut down for maintenance.
Officials said that power was cut to prevent greater damage as the reserve levels were too low.
"The weather agency has been reporting everyday that a late heat wave has come. Have those of you in charge ever wondered that if this trend holds, the electricity demand may spike?" Lee said during a visit to the state-run Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) in southern Seoul.
"Have you ever called the weather agency? If you had made such calls and made preparations in advance, would an incident like this have happened?" Lee said during the meeting with officials from KEPCO, the energy ministry and power plants. "This just means that you don't have the mindset of serving the people at all."
Lee also censured officials for not giving the public an advance notice before cutting power, accusing them of having the mindset of a "backward nation."
"I am outraged over this, but I feel sorry before the people," he 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.