South Korean President Lee Jae Myung apologized Sunday for the widespread disruptions caused by a fire at the country’s main data center, which knocked out key government services and left millions facing headaches with everyday tasks.
The blaze erupted Friday at the National Information Resources Service in Daejeon, sparked by a lithium-ion battery explosion. It crippled online networks, hitting everything from financial transactions to package deliveries and public transportation, according to Yonhap News Agency. During an emergency meeting, Lee expressed regret over the chaos.
“The public is dealing with huge inconveniences and worries because of this fire,” Lee said. “As the nation’s leader, I offer my deepest apologies.”
He urged teams to work nonstop to get critical systems back online and minimize fallout for daily life. Lee slammed the government’s lack of an emergency backup plan, pointing out that major networks stayed offline days later. He called the incident “foreseeable” but preventable, especially since a similar data center disruption hit two years ago.
“This shouldn’t have happened without any countermeasures in place—it’s simply unbelievable,” Lee added. He demanded a full probe into the lapses and ordered officials to beef up network security right away. Looking ahead, he pushed for long-term fixes, like creating a “double-layer operating system” to keep state computers running even if one part fails.
“It’s shocking that our vital networks didn’t have this basic dual setup to handle external damage,” Lee said. “I’ll personally dig into why it took so long to prepare.”
Out of 647 government online systems taken offline as a precaution, 96 suffered direct fire damage. Officials have already started rebooting the other 551 unaffected ones to test for smooth operations and speed up recovery from the South Korea data center fire.
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