A fire at South Korea’s national data center weakened some of the government’s online services and internal networks, sparked a game on Saturday, bringing the system back online and exploring what inspired lithium-ion batteries to start the fire.
Officials said suspected the fire began Friday night’s explosion, which was a battery produced by South Korea’s LG Energy solution during maintenance, damaged some servers and forced hundreds of people to shut down.
The fire caused “heat out of control” and generated extremely high heat in the server room of the National Information Resource Service in Da’an City, preventing firefighters from taking positive action to curb the fire, government officials said in a news letter.
National Data Services acts as a cloud server for many government services and databases for Asia’s heavy Asian countries. It operates data centers elsewhere.
Officials said the fire began to be under control early Saturday at around 8:20 pm (4:20 pm), but officials were forced to shut down to protect the data while security surveyors were still forced to shut down to protect the data.
They said the cause of the initial spark was not clear and is in progress.
LG Energy Solutions declined to comment in the case of investigation. Some government departments, mobile identity systems, postal offices and government legal databases are among the sites that stayed after the fire on Saturday, about 140 kilometers (90 miles) from the capital, Seoul.
According to a notice to reporters, some ministries and commissions are unable to use emails.
Prime Minister Kim Min-Seok apologized on Saturday for causing inconvenience to the public by interfering with the service and said the government will work quickly to resume services. Meanwhile, tax payment deadlines will be delayed soon, he said.
“Due to the nature of the key government systems concentrated in one location, it’s difficult to curb the fire,” King said in an emergency conference on a televised broadcast.
King said the internal networks of Daesen and some government agencies in nearby Sejong were “paralyzed”. Data center head Lee Jae-Yong told the briefing that there is no estimate yet when the service will start again.
A fire official told another press conference that a person was treated for minor injuries. Fire officer Kim Ki-seon said the initial fire location on the fifth floor of the building caused considerable fire damage.
