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Some securities firms have been found to have failed to detect internal system errors for extended periods, only identifying the problems much later before reporting them to financial authorities and taking corrective action. Hanwha Investment & Securities and Woori Investment Securities, in particular, took more than 500 days to detect and fully resolve their respective errors, recording some of the longest system disruptions in the industry. Among major securities firms, Shinhan Securities also experienced a prolonged system error that went undetected for more than five months.

According to data on system disruptions in the securities industry obtained from the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) by the office of Rep. Kim Hyeong-yeon of the Rebuilding Korea Party, a member of the National Assembly's Political Affairs Committee, on Oct. 26, a total of 465 system disruptions occurred across the industry between January 2022 and August this year. The combined duration of these incidents reached 53,146.5 hours. Even after 219 minor incidents classified as lasting less than an hour were uniformly counted as 0.5 hours, or 30 minutes, each, the cumulative duration exceeded 50,000 hours. This is equivalent to 2,214 days, or approximately six years.

Hanwha Investment & Securities recorded the longest duration for a single incident. The company failed to detect a software error that occurred on Feb. 17 last year until Aug. 27 this year, 556 days, or about a year and a half, later. Including the time taken to report the issue to authorities and implement corrective measures the following day, the total duration reached 13,364 hours, or 557 days.

"During an internal inspection in August this year, we discovered an issue that had gone undetected when we launched our new mobile trading system (MTS) in February last year. There was no customer damage," a Hanwha Investment & Securities official said. "The software error affected account opening through the MTS on certain device models, and we have corrected it."

Woori Investment Securities ranked second for the longest single system disruption. The company detected a software error that had occurred on Aug. 18, 2023, on Jan. 14, 2025, 515 days, or about a year and five months, later, before reporting and correcting it. The total duration of the incident was 12,384 hours, or 516 days.

"The issue involved an error in some of the conditions for applying preferential interest rates to a savings product launched when the company was operating as Woori Investment Bank. The error was identified and corrected," a Woori Investment Securities official said.

The two prolonged incidents at Hanwha Investment & Securities and Woori Investment Securities accounted for a combined 25,748 hours, or 48.4% of the industry's total cumulative disruption time.

Prolonged system disruptions also occurred at major securities firms. Shinhan Securities detected and corrected a software error on June 24 last year, five months after it first occurred on Jan. 7. The incident lasted 4,032 hours, or 168 days. As a result, the company paid a total of 810,000 won in compensation to 947 investors.

"We corrected a tax calculation error involving exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and refunded the differences to affected customers," a Shinhan Securities official explained.

In terms of cumulative system disruption hours over the five-year period, Woori Investment Securities ranked first in the industry with 16,380 hours across 14 incidents. It was followed by Hanwha Investment & Securities with 13,701.5 hours across 19 incidents, Shinhan Securities with 7,771 hours across 33 incidents, NH Investment & Securities with 4,232.5 hours across 22 incidents, and Samsung Securities with 2,957.5 hours across 33 incidents.

                                                                                                                 Park I-sak