Seoul: KT Corp, a major South Korean telecom operator, said on Monday it detected distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) cyberattack on its network, causing a disruption in major services nationwide.

Customers using KT network services across the country experienced disruption in both wired and wireless services, including the internet, payment and phone call services.

The company said the latest disruption was caused by a “large-scale DDoS attack in the network.”

KT said it is working to fix the problem as quickly as possible.

“As of noon, KT appears to have recovered most of its internet services, though disruptions continued in some regions,” reports Yonhap news agency.

A DDoS attack refers to a situation in which a multitude of infected computers are directed to try to communicate with a single other computer, overwhelming its connection bandwidth and crowding out legitimate users from access to the site.

Police immediately launched an investigation.

“The cybercrime investigation team of Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency is currently looking into the scope of the attacks and the damage,” a police official said, referring to the police agency in Suwon, 46 kilometres south of Seoul.