A battery explosion caused the loss of seven years of data for 750,000 public servants in South Korea, "crippling the public system," with no backups?

A fire at the National Information Resources Management Institute (NIRS) data center in Daejeon, South Korea, has paralyzed 647 government systems, destroying seven years' worth of documents from 750,000 civil servants, with only 15% of data recoverable, highlighting gaps in backup and resilience. (Background: Naver in South Korea is acquiring the Upbit encryption exchange! Will it be possible to trade crypto assets and won stablecoins using LINE in the future?) (Supplementary background: Will it be implemented by 2027? An in-depth analysis of the capital game behind the 'difficult birth' of the won stablecoin) An explosion of a lithium battery has directly incapacitated South Korea's digital government; what can we learn from this? At the end of September, 140 kilometers from Seoul, a fire broke out in the headquarters data center of the National Information Resources Management Institute (NIRS), quickly engulfing server racks and causing 647 government business systems to go offline, with approximately 858TB of documents accumulated over seven years permanently lost. The fire resulted in the complete loss of government files. It is understood that these documents were stored in a government system called G-Drive, where South Korean civil servants have been required to centralize their work files since 2018. Since the system had no external or offline backups, once the hardware was damaged, the files could not be recovered. After the fire, government email, legal databases, and Government24 services all went offline, impacting basic services such as human resources, taxation, policing, and mobile digital identity, with even emergency response GPS tracking and postal banking operations affected. According to local reports, by October 1, only 101 systems had been restored, with a recovery rate of 15.6%. The president apologized, pointing out that 'there was fundamentally no emergency plan.' On September 28, President Lee Jae-myung apologized to the nation, expressing 'deep regret.' He criticized the government for not establishing a viable response plan after experiencing a power grid failure in 2023, stating that this disaster 'was completely foreseeable yet completely unprepared for.' 'It is not that the contingency plan failed; there was fundamentally no plan.' Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Administrative Security Kim Min revealed that the government has selected a cloud service provider to move 96 damaged systems to a branch center in Daegu, hoping to restart them within a month. However, aside from hardware reconstruction, the more challenging issue is the lack of external backups for seven years of civil service documents, which poses long-term risks to daily administration, policy tracking, and judicial auditing. Decentralized storage: rooting out the risk of 'single point of failure.' The fundamental cause of this disaster is the 'centralized storage' of data. Since the platform (G-Drive) had no external backups, all data stored within it has been completely lost. It is not that blockchain technology must be used, but it is really important to learn the significance of distributed storage to ensure that when any one or several nodes (i.e., data centers) are destroyed by fire, terrorism, or any reason, the impact on the integrity and availability of the entire data network can be minimized, rooting out the risk of 'single point of failure.' South Korea's painful lesson reminds policymakers: while digital efficiency is important, resilience is the last line of defense for preserving the nation's memory and public services. Related reports: Highlights of Korea Blockchain Week: Yumio, AgentYP, and K-Gen jointly hold 'AI x Gaming VIP Night.' Is the spring of crypto startups in Korea coming with the relaxation of virtual asset venture capital? 'An explosion of a battery has turned the seven years of data of 750,000 civil servants in South Korea to ashes, paralyzing public systems, with no backup?' This article was first published in BlockTempo, the most influential blockchain news media.