As a disciplinary personnel measure following a fire at the Daejeon headquarters of the National Information Resources Service (NIRS) in September that effectively paralyzed the national computer network, it is known that Director Lee Jae-yong of the NIRS and the Ministry of the Interior and Safety (MOIS) chief officer in charge of digital government were recently placed on standby.
According to the government on the 29th, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety (MOIS) placed NIRS Director Lee Jae-yong on standby at headquarters in a recent reshuffle. Lee took office in late May 2023 as a senior official with a three-year term, but after a fire broke out in the computer room on the fifth floor of the Daejeon headquarters in September, temporarily paralyzing 709 government administrative information systems, Lee was engulfed in calls for the head of the agency to take responsibility.
A police investigation found that the fire occurred while workers were carrying out battery transfer work without having shut off power to many of the lithium-ion batteries connected to the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) unit. Lee was booked on suspicion of negligent arson in the course of duty along with three other employees, and the Ministry of the Interior and Safety (MOIS) was said to have taken this as an opportunity to carry out personnel measures.
In November 2023, Lee was also at the center of a paralysis of the government's administrative computer network caused by faulty network equipment within the NIRS in the first year of his term. President Lee Jae-myung visited the Daejeon headquarters on the 10th of last month to inspect the fire scene and check on recovery efforts.
The Ministry of the Interior and Safety (MOIS) also placed on standby at headquarters Deputy Minister Lee Yong-seok, who had overseen digital government work including operation of government administrative information systems. As the ministry recently reorganized the Digital Government Innovation Office into the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Government Office, it placed Lee on standby and has not yet appointed a successor. A search is reportedly underway to select the first head of the AI Government Office.
Director Lee and Deputy Minister Lee had already offered to resign during the process of handling the network paralysis, but it was reportedly not accepted at the time. About 10 officials, including bureau and Director-level officials who handled the response to the paralysis, remain with the AI Government Office after the reorganization and are continuing recovery work.
Most of the 709 administrative information systems that went down due to the NIRS fire have been restored. All 693 systems at the Daejeon Center, the main headquarters, were normalized on the 14th of this month, and the remaining 16 are undergoing transfer and restoration work to the Daegu Center. As of the previous day, 700 of the 709 systems had been restarted, putting the recovery rate at 98.7%.