[DigitalToday reporter Jin-ho Lee (이진호)] South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT will investigate whether Google violated obligations under its telecommunications disaster management basic plan in connection with a YouTube access disruption that occurred on the morning of Feb. 18.

A ministry official said on the day, "We plan to investigate whether Google violated its obligations under the telecommunications disaster management plan."

According to the industry, normal video playback did not work on the YouTube mobile app and website from around 10 a.m. on the day. Access problems occurred in both mobile and PC environments. An error message saying "A problem occurred" appeared on screen and use of content was restricted.

Google Korea reported to the ministry around 10:30 a.m. on the day that there had been a screen transmission disruption on the YouTube homepage. The ministry also received information from Google Korea that some functions had been restored around 11 a.m., and then that full restoration had been completed around 11:40 a.m.

Earlier, the ministry established the "2026 Telecommunications Disaster Management Basic Plan" in December last year. The plan sets out compliance obligations and inspection standards for value-added telecommunications service providers and data centre operators above statutory thresholds. Because Google is a value-added telecommunications service provider under the current Telecommunications Business Act, it must report outage details to the government and comply with the plan.

Google, which operates YouTube, said through its official channel, "Due to an issue with the recommendation system, videos were not displayed on the YouTube homepage, the YouTube app, YouTube Music and YouTube Kids." It said, "The homepage has now been restored, but we are taking additional measures for full normalisation."

The YouTube disruption on the day was also reported to have occurred simultaneously in places including the United States, Europe and Asia, as well as South Korea. On DownDetector, a site that tracks service disruptions, the number of YouTube-related error reports surged on the morning of the day. In the United States alone, more than 350,000 access disruption reports were filed.