A lithium-ion battery fire at the National Information Resources Service (NIRS) in Daejeon disabled 647 e-government systems, halting services such as online civil applications, mobile ID and postal functions. The disruption left citizens struggling with delays in everyday transactions that had come to rely on digital platforms.

The NIRS integrates and manages information systems for central ministries, local governments and public institutions, serving as the backbone of the digital state. That such a critical facility could be paralyzed by a single battery fire highlights glaring weaknesses in national crisis management. The government's oft-touted status as a "UN-recognized model e-government" was cast in doubt.

The fire raises serious questions about oversight. The battery involved had already passed its recommended ten-year life span. It was installed just 60 centimeters from servers, short of the 90-centimeter U.S. standard. According to officials, sparks erupted when a worker shut off an uninterruptible power supply to separate the unit. Given recent incidents of battery fires in aircraft and factories, critics question why stronger precautions were not in place. Responsibility must be determined for aging equipment left in use, lax safety protocols and inadequate supervision.

The larger concern is resilience. Fires, cyberattacks and terrorism all pose risks to national IT infrastructure. Effective response requires robust backup capacity to restore services quickly. While the NIRS has mirrored data across its Daejeon, Daegu and Gwangju centers, preparations for simultaneous outages were insufficient. Plans to add redundancy through a new facility in Gongju and cloud integration were delayed over budget constraints, leaving vulnerabilities exposed.



The contrast with the private sector is striking. After the 2022 Pangyo data center fire, companies such as Kakao and Naver invested heavily in tripling their backup systems. Government leaders have often imposed harsh penalties on telecom and financial firms for data leaks and service failures. This incident now raises doubts over whether the state itself meets the standards it demands of others.

In the AI era, data centers are both the arteries and heart of society's information systems. Any failure reverberates widely. The Daejeon fire revealed how fragile the foundations of Korea's e-government remain. The government must prioritize swift restoration of services while developing comprehensive preventive measures to ensure such a crisis does not recur.

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.