A catastrophic fire, triggered by a lithium battery explosion during routine maintenance at a South Korean state data center, has paralyzed hundreds of crucial government services nationwide. Officials warn that restoring these vital digital functions will take significantly longer than initially anticipated as efforts continue to fully extinguish the tenacious blaze.
The impact was immediate and profound. By Saturday, numerous ministry websites—essential for citizens to obtain official documents for everything from property records to personal identification—were inaccessible. The national postal service was forced to revert to manual, offline processing, creating concerns about impending delivery delays. Furthermore, mobile identification cards, increasingly used by South Koreans in lieu of physical IDs, became entirely unusable, and many government employees found their email systems completely offline.
The incident began Friday evening around 8:15 p.m. local time at the National Information Resources Service in Daejeon, a central South Korean city. According to Vice Interior Minister Kim Min-jae, a lithium battery, part of the facility’s power supply, exploded during maintenance work. This initial blast disrupted approximately 70 government systems.
However, the situation escalated as firefighters battled the inferno. To prevent further damage and the potential overheating of other servers, the remaining 647 systems housed in the data center were proactively shut down late Friday night. This drastic measure was deemed necessary during the intense firefighting operation.
Although the fire was largely brought under control by Saturday morning, around 6:30 a.m., all systems at the data center remained offline. Mr. Kim explained that restoration efforts could not commence until the lingering smoke completely cleared and the facility’s internal temperatures normalized, allowing the crucial cooling systems to be reactivated.
This widespread service disruption has ignited serious concerns, particularly with a week-long national holiday fast approaching in early October. There are fears that essential public services, such as the postal system, may not resume normal operations before the holiday period begins, potentially causing extended inconvenience for millions.
The incident has also cast a harsh spotlight on the adequacy of South Korea’s government backup systems. A previous network outage in 2023 prompted officials to promise recovery from system failures within three hours, supported by branch centers outside Daejeon. Yet, Saturday’s events demonstrate that a fire-induced outage presents a far more complex and prolonged challenge than a simple network malfunction.
The firefighting effort itself was a monumental undertaking, with over 200 firefighters and more than 60 engines deployed overnight. The Interior Ministry reported that the blaze had still not been fully extinguished by Saturday evening, underscoring the severity and persistence of the situation.
Complicating the response, firefighters were unable to use water on the lithium battery fire due to the risk of further explosions and extensive damage to the sensitive servers, as explained by Kim Ki-sun, the fire chief of Yuseong district in Daejeon. This necessitated specialized approaches to bring the fire under control.
Amidst the chaos, one of the 13 workers engaged in battery maintenance suffered a first-degree burn. Approximately 100 individuals were evacuated from the facility when the fire first erupted.
Lee Jae-yong, the data center director, stated at the news conference that it was premature to provide a timeline for system restoration, as fire officials had not yet been able to investigate the precise cause of the fire by Saturday morning.
While some government websites were successfully rerouted to alternative servers and brought back online by Saturday morning, critical services like the postal system and the national financial infrastructure remained offline, with officials prioritizing their restoration.
In response to the widespread inconvenience, South Korea’s Prime Minister, Kim Min-seok, offered his apologies to the public. He assured citizens that he had issued directives to expedite the recovery of systems that directly impact daily life. (Pictured above: Kim Min-seok, South Korea’s prime minister, apologized to citizens for the inconvenience caused by the disruptions and said that he had ordered the systems directly affecting people’s daily lives to be restored as quickly as possible. Credit: Chris Jung/NurPhoto, via Reuters)
The Interior Ministry also issued a public notice on Saturday morning, advising citizens to verify the availability of administrative services before making in-person visits. “We ask for your understanding that delays or restrictions may occur on-site,” the ministry stated, emphasizing ongoing efforts to implement manual processing and extend deadlines where possible to mitigate the disruption.