A fire that broke out on the evening of the 26th in the main data center at the Daejeon headquarters of the National Information Resources Service (NIRS) halted 647 key government IT systems, officials confirmed.
Vice Minister Kim Min-jae of the Ministry of the Interior and Safety said at a briefing at the Government Complex Seoul on the 27th that "because the constant temperature and humidity control unit did not function properly due to the fire, there were concerns about server overheating, and we proactively shut down operations to safely protect the systems."
According to NIRS, the fire occurred in Computer Room No. 7. As the constant temperature and humidity device shut down, heat could have affected the servers, so power was cut off immediately. NIRS currently operates centers in Gwangju and Daegu in addition to the Daejeon headquarters and can provide a total of 1,600 government services, but due to this fire, 647 systems at the Daejeon headquarters have stopped.
The Vice Minister said, "We plan to first restore the constant temperature and humidity control unit, then restart the servers and carry out recovery measures," adding, "We will quickly normalize services with a large impact on daily life, such as Korea Post's financial and mail services."
As for the cause of the fire, officials said, "During work to move an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) battery to the basement, a fire broke out from one battery whose power had been cut." A UPS battery is a device that keeps the power supply to IT systems stable.
The Vice Minister said, "To prevent disadvantages due to delays in handling civil petitions, we asked relevant agencies to extend deadlines for tax payments and document submissions," adding, "To inform the public about the government service disruption, we sent a disaster text message at 8 a.m. today to notify them of service access restrictions and the need to check before visiting government offices."
He added, "Even if it is somewhat inconvenient, please use alternative sites or offline counters," and "you can also check specific outage conditions and alternative sites in a notice on Naver."
Finally, the Vice Minister said, "We once again apologize for the significant inconvenience to the public caused by this outage," and emphasized, "We will swiftly restore the systems and do our best to stabilize the situation."