On the evening of September 26, a serious lithium battery fire broke out at the National Information Resources Management Institute of South Korea (South Korea’s national computer network center), causing widespread disruption of online administrative services across the country. Nearly a month later, the consequences of the disaster have not yet been completely eliminated. According to South Korean media reports,Of the 709 government IT systems affected by the fire, only 373 have returned to normal so far, and the overall recovery rate is only 52.6%.
South Korean Interior Minister Yoon Ho-jung pointed out that among all affected systems, about 77.5% of first-level priority systems and about 64.7% of second-level priority systems have been restored, but did not disclose the time required to fully restore all systems.
At present, a total of 96 systems have been confirmed to be completely burned, including 858TB of data in the South Korean government's file storage system G-Drive, which was confirmed to be irrecoverable due to the lack of an external backup mechanism, resulting in permanent loss.
So far, the South Korean police have arrested four people involved, including the staff responsible for transferring lithium batteries that day and an on-site supervisor, and will prosecute them for "negligence causing fire."
There was also a front-line public official in charge of the network failure emergency response team who committed suicide by jumping off a building. No senior South Korean government official has resigned or stepped down to take responsibility for the incident.
