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Daejeon fire reveals weaknesses in disaster preparedness

Published: 28 Sep. 2025, 18:04

Officials cover broken windows with waterproof sheets at the National Information Resources Service in Daejeon on Sept. 28 after a fire triggers an emergency. [KIM SUNG-TAE]

A fire at a government data center in Daejeon on Friday paralyzed hundreds of state-run digital services, exposing weak disaster preparedness and sparking fears of a nationwide disruption of postal services ahead of the weeklong Chuseok harvest holiday.

The blaze broke out in the computer room of the National Information Resources Service (NIRS) in Yuseong District, Daejeon, forcing 647 government systems to go offline. The NIRS manages and consolidates state-level IT infrastructure.

The outage left Korea Post unable to process deposits, withdrawals, transfers, ATM transactions or insurance payments, with postal operations nationwide at a standstill. If systems are not restored by next week, postal services will shift entirely offline, raising the prospect of a “postal crisis.”

Korea Post said Sunday it had restarted disabled systems and begun checks to normalize services.

Experts pointed to lax management at the data center. The government’s IT systems were not backed by a dual-operation structure. The fire-damaged facility operated in a private cloud environment managed directly by the NIRS.

Plans had been made to establish dualizing the data management system between the Daejeon headquarters and a center in Gwangju, but the project was delayed by budget issues. Ironically, after the 2022 SK C&C data center fire that knocked KakaoTalk offline nationwide, the government ordered private companies to build stronger backup systems. Yet its own infrastructure remained unprepared.

A firefighter moves a burned battery at the National Information Resources Service in Yuseong District, Daejeon, on Sept. 27. [YONHAP]

“There was no dual center in place to take over immediately if one side failed,” said Lim Jong-in, professor at Korea University’s Graduate School of Information Security. “The data itself was backed up, but the system was not.”

The cause of the blaze is believed to be linked to lithium-ion batteries used in an uninterruptible power supply. The Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters said sparks erupted during a battery replacement. The battery in question had exceeded its recommended one-year lifespan.

“Old batteries are far more prone to fire, often from internal short circuits,” said Sun Yang-kook, professor of energy engineering at Hanyang University.

The batteries passed a routine safety check in June, leading to speculation that the battery management system (BMS), which monitors voltage, temperature, charging and lifespan, may have malfunctioned.

An error message appears on the Daum application on a smartphone in front of the SK Pangyo Campus in Bundang District, Seongnam, Gyeonggi, on Oct. 15, 2022, after a fire breaks out. [YONHAP]

“If the BMS failed, it could have triggered the fire,” said one industry official. Police have launched a special investigation team to examine whether poor oversight or inadequate safety measures played a role.

Experts stressed that once systems are restored, the government must build true redundancy into its operations. One proposal is to keep classified data under direct state control while outsourcing citizen-facing services to multiple regions in private cloud networks to ensure availability.

“The U.S. works with private companies like Google and Amazon Web Services to boost efficiency and resilience,” Lim said. “The Korean government should also cooperate with private firms where needed.”

Battery safety management also needs to improve, experts added. “Instead of monitoring batteries at the module level, managing them cell by cell allows faster containment of local issues,” said Sun. “BMS systems with cell-level control can significantly reduce fire risk.”

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
BY KIM NAM-YOUNG [[email protected]]