An unannounced power outage interrupted the 108th TOPIK (Test of Proficiency in Korean) at the General Instruction Building of National Taiwan University in Taipei on Sunday, the United Daily News reported. The reading section was due to end at 4:30 p.m., but the lights went out at about 4:07 p.m.

Proctors told candidates to close their papers and wait for instructions. Test-takers said they waited roughly 30 to 40 minutes before papers were finally collected at 4:45 p.m. Some said they had first been told that lost time would be made up once power returned, only to learn that the exam was being called off.

The Organizer's Statement and the Cause of the Outage

In a notice, Taiwan's Language Training and Testing Center (LTTC) said that because it could not tell when power would return, it decided after an emergency response on site and confirmation with the Korean organizer to halt the exam at that venue. Make-up sessions and refunds will be decided by the Korean organizer and announced by website, text message and email to affected candidates once confirmed. The notice did not say whether sections already completed would be scored.

On the cause, NTU's General Affairs Office said in a notice at 6:36 p.m. that an abnormality in high-voltage equipment on the campus Haiyang feeder line cut power to several buildings. A contractor identified the faulty equipment and began emergency repairs, it said.

Candidates' Reactions and Open Questions

Candidates were upset. Some still had seven reading questions unanswered, while many had already finished. Others, who had completed the earlier writing section, objected that the whole exam would not be scored. Some argued the classroom remained bright enough to keep writing and that officials should have handled each room according to its conditions rather than ordering everyone to stop.

One candidate who flew home specifically for the exam said the airfare had been wasted, and another who urgently needed the score wept on site. Candidates worry about graduate school applications, exchange programs and graduation requirements, and fear that even a make-up exam may come too late for deadlines. Some said a refund cannot make up for lost time and opportunity.

Candidates want results for completed sections to be kept and only the affected portion retaken, but that is their request, not an official decision. As of late Sunday, the make-up date, refund method and whether completed sections would count had not been confirmed.