South Korea gradually brings digital government services back online after fire

South Korea’s digital government transformation took a body blow this weekend, with a major disruption caused by a fire at a data center where the cloud services are hosted.

An update from the Ministry of the Interior and Safety on Sunday said that 647 digital government services had been affected, and that 30 services had been restored as of 10pm. Among them was the mobile digital ID card, which provides the identity verification that underpins many other public and private-sector services.

“The recovery is prioritizing systems that affect public safety, citizens’ property, and economic activities, and is being carried out in order of priority according to the system’s importance level classification system,” the Ministry said.

Korea Customs, national police and fire services were also affected by the outage, Reuters reports.

The fire hit servers at the National Information Resources Management Agency after breaking out during routine maintenance on Friday night. It was caused by the explosion of an LG Energy Solution battery which had reached the end of its warranty last year.

The incident prompted an apology from President Lee Jae Myung, who noted that government services also suffered a major disruption in 2023, yet failed to implement an effective backup.

Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters Head Yoon Ho-jung says new services are being restored each hour.

The incident, along with the growing realization that South Korea’s digital ID does not comply with either of the widely recognized international formats, indicates that some important details were neglected in the country’s rapid adoption of digital credentials and services.

Article Topics

data center  |  digital government  |  digital ID  |  government services  |  identity verification  |  South Korea