South Korea raises cyber threat alert after datacentre fire cripples government services

South Korea raised the national cyber threat level alert after a major datacentre fire crippled key government services and left sensitive networks vulnerable to hackers.

The National Intelligence Service raised the alert level from “attention” to “caution” due to concerns about hackers taking advantage of the outage to carry out attacks.

The alert level of “caution” requires government agencies to notify any cyberthreats or network paralysis to the National Cyber Security Centre.

The fire erupted at around 8.15pm local time on Friday. One of the lithium batteries powering the National Information Resources Service exploded while workers were relocating them from the fifth floor to the basement during maintenance work.

The fire at the datacentre in the central city of Daejeon, a major technology hub, disrupted computer servers for nearly 70 government systems.

By night, authorities had shut down 647 systems at the datacentre due to the risk of overheating other servers in the building.

The fire, which left one worker with first-degree burns, was extinguished after about 22 hours.

On Saturday, several ministry websites crucial for obtaining official documents went offline. The national postal service reverted to processing mail manually, raising the risk of delivery delays.

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Mobile identification cards – commonly used in place of physical IDs – became inaccessible, while many government employees also lost access to their email services.

Schools were not able to access student records, a national crematorium booking system was affected and some hospitals had to send back citizens who didn’t have physical identification cards.

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Authorities said 96 of the affected systems were completely destroyed. Moving them to a backup facility in Daegu was expected to take about four weeks, meaning the disruption could stretch into Chuseok, the week-long national holiday in October.

Only about 15 per cent of the affected services had been restored by Wednesday morning.

The Daejeon police, meanwhile, booked four people for occupational negligence in connection with the fire. They were an onsite NIRS manager, two workers handling battery relocation, and an official from the supervision company.

The National Intelligence Agency said there was a need to strengthen the monitoring of cyber threats ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, set to open in the southeastern city of Gyeongju on 31 October.