By The Korea Times

Copyright scmp

In a digitalised South Korea, most administrative tasks can be handled easily online. But that was not the case on Monday morning, the first workday after a fire over the weekend incapacitated most public online administrative services.
On Friday, the National Information Resources Service in Daejeon, which operates the country’s data centre and network security system, was hit by a lithium-ion battery fire. It was extinguished after 22 hours, but the blaze shut down 647 administrative systems.
Although systems – including Government24, the state portal for most administrative services, and postal banking services – are gradually being restored, South Koreans still faced major disruptions on Monday.
At 9am, when a community service centre in Seoul’s Dongdaemun district opened, residents gathered to handle tasks normally done online.

Kim, 25, who asked to be identified only by her surname, said the disruption forced her to delay a planned trip out of the city.
“I came to get documents for graduate school applications, which I would normally obtain online,” Kim said. “I was supposed to travel yesterday, but having to come here in person pushed back my schedule.”
Kim Doo-han, 74, also had to cancel his plans to obtain real estate documents that are usually issued online with ease.
“I had other plans this morning, but after seeing news of the government network outage, I came here in person,” he said. “The community centre was operating normally when I arrived, but the incident has shaken my trust in government services.”
Government workers, too, were left scrambling.
When asked which services were available, an official checked the computer screen and wrote on sticky notes the ones still unavailable – such as overseas residence registration and resident ID card issuance – adding that some of them could be restored soon.

The Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters said on Monday that 55 of the 647 government administrative information systems shut down by the fire had been restored, a recovery rate of 8.5 per cent, according to The Chosun Daily.
“We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused by the outage,” said Minister of the Interior and Safety Yun Ho-jung, who is also head of the agency.
“With the work week starting, demand for services will rise and the inconvenience could worsen, so I urge ministries and local governments to coordinate measures to minimise disruption.”
The ministry is hoping to resume services on portal sites such as Naver and Daum soon.
On Monday, the ministry said, as quoted by The Chosun Daily: “It has been decided to relocate 96 systems from the completely destroyed 7-1 computer room to the Daegu centre.”
However, transferring and restarting the 96 key information systems that were completely destroyed is expected to take about two weeks, meaning full service restoration is likely to take time.
This article was first published by The Korea Times
Additional reporting by SCMP’s Asia desk