SK Telecom, the largest mobile carrier in Korea, suffered network breakdowns on Thursday.

The crashes of the network services took place at around 6:00 p.m., and the cause of the incident is suspected to be technical glitches in home location registration systems, the main databases containing pertinent data on subscribers.

The HLR helps handsets to connect to the network stations.

“The technical problems in the HLR system caused network breakdowns for about 30 minutes,” the telecommunications firm said.

In actuality, though, the problems lingered longer than 30 minutes for many mobile users.

Damages incurred because of the breakdown have not yet been determined.

Subscribers were not able to make and receive calls, and some could not use data services during the network malfunction.

The incident came on the heels of another case of network trouble a week ago.

By Kim Young-won

(wone0102@heraldcorp.com)