On the 28th, officials from the fire department, police, and the National Forensic Service are moving to conduct a joint investigation at the site of the fire at the National Information Resources Service in Yuseong-gu, Daejeon. On the 26th, a lithium-ion battery fire in an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) unit at the National Information Resources Service, which houses government computing systems, led to a massive disruption of government computing services. Yonhap News. As key government information systems were destroyed by a lithium battery fire at the National Information Resources Service (NIRS) computer center, attention is now focused on when public services will be restored and normalized.

It appears unrealistic to expect normal civil services next week when district offices and local community centers resume operations, with some projections suggesting it could take about two weeks to restart the destroyed systems.

According to the government on the 28th, the NIRS is preparing to migrate the 96 systems located in the 5th-floor 7-1 server room, which suffered significant fire damage, to a public-private partnership cloud service at its Daegu center.

Some within the government estimate that it could take "about two weeks" for these destroyed systems to be operational again at the Daegu center.

The 96 destroyed systems are reportedly among the government's core information systems, including the e-People (Gukmin Shinmungo) portal, the National Law Information Center, and the On-Nara system, which is the administrative network used by public officials.

The On-Nara system is essential for civil servants to perform tasks such as submitting documents.

Furthermore, since most of the website management systems for central government ministries, including the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, were also located in the destroyed 7-1 server room, it is expected to take a considerable amount of time before they are fully normalized.

Currently, the only service to have resumed operation, excluding some functions, is the mobile identification card.

In the case of mobile identification cards, all functions—excluding new issuances and reissuances—were normalized as of the 26th, the day of the fire, by switching to the Disaster Recovery (DR) system at the Gwangju center.

Unlike the central government ministries, the Presidential Office website remains operational, unaffected by the fire at the NIRS.

The 'Government 24' online civil service portal and the GPKI (Government Public Key Infrastructure) system, which verifies the identities of public officials accessing the 'Sae-eol' administrative network, are located on the 2nd through 4th floors of the NIRS Daejeon main building, which were not directly damaged by the fire.

Following the fire in the 7-1 server room on the 5th floor on the 26th, the NIRS preemptively shut down systems in other areas and floors to protect them after the air conditioning and humidity control units were turned off.

These server rooms on other floors house 551 systems, excluding the 96 systems destroyed in the 7-1 server room.

The government plans to complete the restoration of communication and security equipment in the NIRS server rooms and then sequentially restart the 551 systems to verify whether normal service is possible.

For this reason, it seems unrealistic to expect normal civil services next week, including Monday the 29th, when civil service locations such as district offices and community centers reopen.

Yonhap News