Gov't lowers crisis level for online service outage to 'alert'

Interior Minister Yun Ho-jung speaks at a meeting of the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters, Thursday. Yonhap

The government said Thursday it has lowered the crisis level applied to September's online service outage from "serious" to "alert" following the restoration of more than 95 percent of affected systems.

As of 6 a.m., 676 of the 709 government services crippled by a fire at the state data center in the central city of Daejeon had been normalized, bringing the restoration rate to 95.3 percent, according to the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters (CDSCH).

"All of the Grade 1 and Grade 2 systems that are connected to people's lives and safety have been normalized," Interior Minister Yun Ho-jung said during a meeting of the CDSCH. "As the completion of recovery is now within sight, we will lower the administrative data systems' crisis management level from 'serious' to 'alert' as of today."

Under the adjustment, the CDSCH will be disbanded and replaced by a crisis response headquarters.

Yun said the government aims to complete the recovery of all systems by December.

The fire at the National Information Resources Service broke out on Sept. 26, damaging servers and crippling key online administrative systems.

The blaze was attributed to a lithium-ion battery explosion in a server room and was put out the next day.