On the evening of September 26, local time, the National Information Resource Service Center in central South Korea's city of Takeda, during maintenance operations, the lithium battery exploded, eventually causing 647 government systems to be paralyzed, and a large area of government and people's livelihoods services were blocked.
Currently, the South Korean government is working to restore the system to reboot the scene. Executive Security Minister Yoon Hehe said 384 batteries had been burned and about 250 of them had been removed by the evening of the 27th. He revealed on social media that he would prioritize the restoration of intact systems, focusing on public security, national assets and economic operation.
The fire site.
On the morning of the 27th, Yin He said in an emergency meeting that the crisis management level of the government information system was raised from "alert" to "serious". he said that the government will use all available resources to deal with the incident as soon as possible and make the best efforts to reduce discomfort to the public.
It is that the explosion originated from a battery in the central uninterrupted power system (UPS) when staff were disconnecting it from the server in order to move it to the basement, resulting in an explosion, triggering a chain reaction.
After the fire, more than 200 firefighters and more than 60 fire vehicles were rescued overnight by the authorities.The fire was controlled on the morning of the 27th, after which it reignited until 6 p.m. on the same day, and lasted 22 hours.
Firefighters dispose of burned lithium batteries
In this regard, the head of the city's fire department said that the fire extinguishing process was complex and difficult, and if directly used with water, it could cause the battery to explode again and damage the servers.The administrative security department said that one of the 13 workers who were present at the time in the maintenance of the battery, a worker's arm and face were lightly burned.
It is understood that the fire initially caused the server interruption of about 70 government systems. However, due to fear of overheating of other servers in the building, the rest of the systems were also shut down in an emergency during the fire fighting process on the evening of 26th, with a total of 647, accounting for about one third of all online information systems.
The following day, South Koreans discovered that several government department websites, including those that obtained official documents, were still inaccessible. The national post office was forced to shift to offline mail processing, which could lead to delays in filing. Mobile e-mails could not be enabled and government e-mails were also paralyzed. At the same time, 119 emergency relief locations were interrupted, online document issuance and internal government networks stalled. The websites of major government agencies, such as the Office of the Prime Minister, the Ministry of Security and the Ministry of Finance, were also inaccessible.
The service interruption also caused inconvenience to people's daily life. For example, payment using a postal debit card at a convenience store cannot be completed, and the transfer service of a postal financial account cannot be used. In addition, transportation is also affected. Passengers who hold preferential tickets for buses, trains and planes must bring their physical identity documents to get on or board the plane smoothly.
South Koreans are concerned that critical systems, including the post office, may not be able to re-operate before the long national holiday in early October, while questioning whether government servers have enough backup systems.
After a massive government network disruption due to a router failure in 2023, relevant departments claimed that the system could be restored within three hours with other regional subsidiaries.
However, after the accident, the South Korean government said on the 27th that it took too long to put out the fire, and the recovery process was far slower than that of ordinary network failures, so it could not be started immediately.
Red Star Journalist Jan Poe Yu