South Korea: Data center fire paralyzes the government
A fire in a battery room of the national computing center in Daejeon, South Korea, paralyzed hundreds of digital government services. The incident, triggered by the explosion of a lithium-ion battery, raises questions about the reliability and redundancy of critical infrastructure.
Quelle: Own presentation
Summary of the incident
On Friday evening, September 26, 2025 (KST), a large fire broke out in the national computing center of the National Information Resources Service (NIRS) in Daejeon An extensive fire broke out. The cause was the explosion of a lithium-ion battery in a data processing room. NIRS is the central IT backbone of the South Korean government and hosts cloud servers and networks for hundreds of administrative and specialized procedures, including identity and passport services, payments and government portals. The fire led to the outage of 647 government systems, including 436 public online services and 211 internal networks. About 100 people were evacuated, one person sustained minor injuries. Firefighting efforts were hampered by the intense heat development in the windowless IT floor, which necessitated shutting down servers. By the weekend, 551 of 647 affected systems were gradually restarted, while 96 systems sustained direct damage. President Lee Jae Myung announced improved security and redundancy measures and criticized the lack of emergency plans. The goal is a dual-system architecture for critical processes.
Technical analysis
The immediate power supply in data centers is secured by so-called USV-Systeme (Uninterruptible Power Supply) The chain reaction, known as Thermal Runaway, that can release flames and toxic gases. NFPA 855 Standards govern the arrangement, separation and energy limits of such battery rooms to limit fire load and spread.
Quelle: YouTube
The technical talk explains the four stages of thermal runaway development and shows possible early warning and protective measures in battery rooms.
Quelle: YouTube
The discussion provides a practical assessment of battery codes, sensing, and fire suppression concepts in data centers.
Quelle: justrite.com
A burning lithium-ion battery that represents the potential cause of the fire in the data center.
Context and reactions
The incident occurred in the delicate period before the Chuseok holiday, a time when shipping, payments and identity processes are particularly heavily used, which increased political and public attention. The concentration of many key systems in one place increased vulnerability; the government admitted that the bundling aggravated the situation. This case recalls the Kakao-Ausfall im Jahr 2022, That a battery room fire at the SK C&C Datacenter disrupted nationwide services and intensified the debate about lithium-ion risks in data centers. Internationally, reports of incidents at UPS systems under high load are mounting, pushing the industry toward better protection and early warning concepts. Investigations into the exact trigger in Daejeon are ongoing; a link to components from LG Energy Solution is being examined, with the company not commenting due to ongoing investigations. President Lee called for more security, budgets, and a redundant dual-system for the administrative IT and criticized the lack of emergency plans. The Prime Minister publicly apologized and announced relief measures such as deadline extensions. The Interior Ministry confirmed that the bundling of critical systems at a single location complicated the situation and published notes on alternative channels. Industry voices point to international incidents with UPS systems under AI workloads and advocate more realistic protection scenarios. There is no evidence of a cyberattack; authorities attribute the outage to a physical battery room fire.
Quelle: hillerfire.com
A typical data center, as affected by the fire in Daejeon.
Impacts and recommendations
Citizen services will experience outages and redirects; check official status pages and backup portals, and heed the ministries’ deadline communications. For IT teams it is crucial to rethink redundancy, especially the separation of battery and server zones, physical segmentation, limiting energy density per fire compartment, and early detection of gases and rising temperatures. NFPA-855 guardrails set concrete limits. Those using lithium-ion batteries should align the protection strategy with short UPS runtimes, peak loads and shutdown logic. Technical papers show how thermal runaway scenarios can be detected early and contained. Open questions concern the exact triggering chain, regulatory consequences for battery-room design and redundancy obligations, and the speed with which directly damaged systems can be replaced and data integrity checked. A single battery room must not become a single point of failure for a digital state. The incident in Daejeon underlines that physical resilience, true redundancy across locations, and consistent battery-room safety are not luxuries but prerequisites — for administrations as well as for businesses.
Quelle: independent.co.uk
The destruction after a major fire, as could have occurred at the Daejeon data center.