Are all PAL-versions limited by the "PAL-bug" and were any measures taken to fix it?

When I first played Digimon World I really loved the game, but sadly the so caled "PAL-bug" rips out a big amount of the game.

For those who don't know it:

The PAL-bug causes that Agumon at the Mountain-castle won't start his dialouge.

So he also doesn't leave the passage he is guarding and you can't get further. This is blocking a significant progress point of the game. Making like 50% of the game inaccessable, because on the one hand to get further 1 or 2 special digimons have to be in the city which would be requiring to get some methods from the mountain castle or some items connected with those digimons. and even if you mannage to get ALL digimons into the city which aren't blocked by this bug you just have 1 more as needed for the end game area. but getting all of them by a great amount of support missed in the city is something I never managed to handle.

So are there any measures taken for PAL users of the game so they can also play the full game? Where they able refund it since they couldn't play the game they paid for? Where there some kind of patches send out (doubtful as we are talking about PSOne)?

Was this fixed for later versions and so there are multiple PAL-versions out with some working and some beeing more a demo as the full game?

Or was it just branded as "Bad luck for these PAL-users"?

If the latter is the case: is there anyway known to workaround this bug?

I have read stuff about just opening the disk case after a third sound so some parts of the map are loaded but actually not the digimons so I can walk through the passage.

But that doesn't help me either since I dont just want to visit the castle without interacting, but play the whole game...