Lee apologizes for public inconvenience caused by data center fire

President Lee Jae Myung speaks during an emergency meeting to discuss the response to a fire at the National Information Resources Service held at the central disaster response headquarters in Seoul, Sunday. Joint Press Corps

President Lee Jae Myung on Sunday apologized over inconveniences caused to people after a fire at the state data center crippled services across multiple sectors.

Lee issued the apology during an emergency meeting after the government's online services and networks were disrupted by the fire that broke out at the National Information Resources Service in the central city of Daejeon on Friday following a lithium-ion battery explosion.

"The public is experiencing great inconvenience and anxiety because of the fire. As the nation's top executive, I offer my sincere apologies," he said.

Lee called for around-the-clock efforts to restore key public systems and resume their operation to prevent people from experiencing inconvenience in using services linked to their daily lives, such as financial services, goods delivery and transportation.

He criticized the lack of an emergency restoration mechanism, noting that major network infrastructure remained down days after the fire.

"This was a foreseeable incident, yet there were no countermeasures. It's not that the measures failed to work — they simply did not exist," he said, adding, "This is incomprehensible."

He also instructed officials to strengthen the basic security and safety system of the government network and to draw up mid- and long-term response measures to prevent a recurrence, including establishing a "double-layer operating system" for state computer networks.

"It is astonishing that such a critical network did not even have a double-layer preparation system in place to immediately respond when damaged by external factors," he said. "A dual-operation system is, of course, essential, and I will also thoroughly look into why preparations for it have not been made until now."

Of the 647 online systems that the government shut down, 96 systems were directly damaged by the fire. The government began resuming the operation of 551 computer systems not affected by the blaze in a bid to review whether the services are operating normally.