Gov't services remain crippled as recovery drags on

SEOUL, September 29 (AJP) - A nationwide network outage caused by a fire at a state-run data center has entered its fourth day, with recovery efforts still below 5 percent. As of Monday, key services, including Government24, remain offline, and full recovery is expected to take at least two weeks.

According to the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, only 30 of nearly 650 affected systems have been restored, with a recovery rate of just 4.6 percent, following the fire at the National Computing and Information Agency in Daejeon, which hosts servers for most government agencies and facilities nationwide.

Efforts are underway to restart approximately 500 systems in unaffected areas of the agency, while 96 systems directly damaged by the fire are expected to face prolonged delays in restoration.

A ministry official said, "Relocating and reinstalling these servers at another data center in Daegu is more efficient, and the process is expected to take about two weeks."
 

Meanwhile, the slow recovery is causing major disruptions, forcing citizens to visit local district offices or make phone calls to book or access various administrative services.

Yoon Ho-jung, head of the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters, said, "We will do our best to minimize public inconvenience by transparently sharing recovery progress and other relevant information."

* This article, published by Economic Daily, was translated by AI and edited by AJP.