81 online public services restored after outage caused by national data center fire

An administrative service machine at a subway station in Seoul is offline, Saturday, due to an outage caused by a fire at the National Information Resources Service in the central city of Daejeon. Yonhap

A total of 81 online public services, including a major government portal and the banking arm of the national postal service, were restored Monday following an outage caused by a fire at the state data management agency.

As of 10 p.m., 12.5 percent of the 647 public administration systems that were suspended in the wake of Friday's fire at the National Information Resources Service (NIRS) in Daejeon, about 140 kilometers south of Seoul, were back online, according to the government.

Restored services included GOV.KR, a major government portal for civil application services, the interior ministry's mobile identification system, the Office for Government Policy Coordination's state management system and the science ministry's internal portal for postal logistics.

The government has said it is prioritizing the restoration of services directly affecting people's safety and economic activities, but the slow normalization process is expected to delay many administrative procedures as local government offices reopened after the weekend.

"I deeply apologize for causing great inconvenience to the people through this disorder," Interior Minister Yun Ho-jung said, rising from his seat and bowing in apology during a meeting of the government's Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters in the central administrative city of Sejong.

Interior Minister Yun Ho-jung bows in apology over a massive public services outage during a meeting of the government's Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters at the Government Complex Sejong, Sunday. Yonhap

The minister said it will be difficult to immediately restore services linked to 96 systems destroyed in the fire, but the government will push to relocate them to a cloud at the NIRS' branch in the southeastern city of Daegu and quickly come up with alternatives.

Vice Interior Minister Kim Min-jae later told a press briefing the relocation and restoration work is expected to take around four weeks.

The 96 systems include the national law information center run by the ministry of government legislation, the National Counterterrorism Center website and the online government briefing system.

Applications for the second round of government-issued consumption coupons are possible, but a government site receiving civil complaints has been suspended, making it necessary to visit the local community service center to file any complaints.

A nationwide cremation booking site has also been affected by the outage, requiring people to contact individual crematoriums online or via phone.

President Lee Jae Myung apologized to the nation Sunday, saying the people are experiencing "great inconvenience and anxiety" due to the fire.

He instructed the government to do everything to restore the services quickly ahead of the Chuseok holiday, when demand for postal, delivery and financial services is high.

The fire began after a lithium-ion battery exploded in a server room on the fifth floor of the NIRS and was completely extinguished at 6 p.m. Saturday, some 22 hours after the outbreak, authorities said.

Police have formed an investigation team comprising around 20 people to determine the cause of the fire, while three investigators specializing in lithium-ion batteries have additionally been assigned to the task, a police official told reporters during a regular press briefing.

The NIRS said in response to a query that the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) batteries that caught fire were assessed to be "normal" on periodic tests last year and this year but their replacement had been recommended as they were past their 10-year lifespan.

The agency also clarified in response to reports that the batteries caught fire as they were being replaced that they were being relocated to the basement to be separated from servers.