Justice Ministry passenger pre-check system fails at Incheon Airport

On 3 November 2026, the Justice Ministry's Interactive Passenger Check system failed in the early morning. Airlines use the system to receive passenger data and confirm travellers may board, so the outage left carriers at Incheon unable to process departures normally for about two hours.

Some flights were delayed as a result. Reports differed on the scale: one outlet counted nine Incheon departures held up, while others cited dozens of delayed flights nationwide. The ministry described the delays as within normal operating levels and said affected passengers completed exit screening before their scheduled departures.

The ministry reportedly suspected the glitch was linked to work replacing ageing border-control storage equipment, which may have overloaded the database servers. The official cause remained under investigation.

The incident came days after a separate check-in disruption at Incheon on 30 October, caused by a fault in a global airline network. Together they raised questions about how dependent South Korea's main international hub is on a handful of IT systems.