The artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT, Gemini, the navigation app Tmap, the delivery app Baemin, and the social media platform X experienced temporary connectivity issues from 2 p.m. on the 4th. The cause of the problem appeared to be a connectivity issue in the Korean regional network of the service infrastructure provider Cloudflare.
On the same day, Cloudflare announced on its system status page about 'Network Connectivity Issues in Korea,' stating, "Due to connectivity issues in Korea, we have applied corrective measures and are monitoring the outcomes after resolving the problem." It added, "We are currently investigating and working to mitigate the network connectivity issues and will provide additional updates soon."
On that day, ChatGPT became temporarily unavailable around 2 p.m. but was restored within 10 minutes. Earlier, Google's Gemini also experienced a temporary outage before being restored.
Tmap also became unavailable around 2:10 p.m. but was restored about 10 minutes later. The services subsequently experienced intermittent website outages and restorations.
Recently, there have been repeated instances where the global cloud and server infrastructure could not handle the surging demand for AI computing. Previously, in June, a Google Cloud outage caused major app services, including music streaming service Spotify, ChatGPT, and messaging platform Discord, to be inaccessible for 7 hours and 30 minutes. At that time, a global outage occurred due to the suspension of services provided by Cloudflare in conjunction with Google Cloud.