South Korea’s interior ministry is slowly bringing back its administrative computer network after a scary fire shut everything down at the main state data center in Daejeon. The blaze started Friday from a lithium-ion battery explosion in a fifth-floor computer room at the National Information Resources Service, according to Yonhap news agency.
By 7 a.m. Sunday, officials had fixed more than half of the network devices at the center. That’s good news for the 767 key security systems—99 percent of them are up and running again.
The ministry plans to restart 551 computer systems that dodged the fire damage right away. They’ll test these to make sure online services work smoothly. Out of the center’s 647 government network systems, about 96 took a hit from the flames. That includes everyday services like the mobile identification system and online postal services. Among the damaged ones, 436 affect the public, while 211 are internal tools for government workers.
“The government is working hard to get the administrative system back online fast,” said Kim Kwang-yong, head of the Disaster Safety Management Headquarters. “We’ll keep everyone updated on the recovery progress and share what caused the fire in a clear way.”
Firefighters and police are heading to the site soon to figure out exactly what sparked the battery explosion. It happened while workers were unplugging uninterruptible power supply batteries from servers to move them to the basement. The fire finally died out at 6 p.m. Saturday—about 22 hours after it began.
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