Hundreds of South Korean government services go offline following data center fire

• Over 600 South Korean government services remain disrupted after outage
• The 22-hour fire started from one single battery, spread to 200-400 batteries
• Researcher criticizes the facility’s battery storage techniques

A fire at the National Information Resources Service (NIRS) in Daejeon, South Korea affected all of its servers, suspending 647 online government systems across the nation in the process.

The fire, which started in one lithium-ion battery, spread to an estimated 234 batteries, though depending on the source, estimated rise as high as 400. This caused temperatures inside the facility to reach 160°C.

Only around 30 online systems have since been restored, leaving more than 600 affected by the fire-induced outage.