Following last week's fire at a government data center that interrupted most digital administrative services and the official work portal, President Lee Jae Myung directed all government departments to examine their security and safety protocols.
Lee issued this directive after a lithium-ion battery fire hit the National Information Resources Service facility in Daejeon on Friday, the organization responsible for overseeing the government's data infrastructure and network protection. The fire started in a server room on the fifth floor and took 22 hours to put out, causing 647 administrative systems to go offline. Law enforcement is looking into what specifically caused the incident.
The president described the circumstances as "difficult to comprehend," particularly regarding the agency's inability to activate backup systems. He acknowledged his own responsibility for failing to identify these issues beforehand.
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He further instructed officials to concentrate on stopping criminal activities like cyber intrusions and phishing schemes that might take advantage of the administrative network disruption.
In response to Lee's directive, the Financial Services Commission and Financial Supervisory Service released a public warning about potential smishing attacks - fraudulent schemes conducted through text messages - that could exploit the reduced availability of government services following the incident.
Officials emphasized that legitimate financial institutions do not distribute application files through text messages or solicit information via temporary web platforms, advising citizens to refrain from clicking suspicious links.
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The Interior and Safety Ministry released a comparable alert, noting that official communications will not include text messages or social media posts containing direct links.
The National Intelligence Service elevated the country's cybersecurity threat status from attention to caution, emphasizing the necessity for enhanced surveillance of digital criminal activities before the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit scheduled for late October.
The leading opposition People Power Party established a task force to address the nationwide network disruption resulting from the fire incident.
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Representative Park Duk-hyum leads this team, which comprises legislators from committees overseeing science and ICT, public administration, and intelligence matters. To minimize public disruption before the extended Chuseok holiday starting with National Foundation Day on Friday, authorities focused on reinstating essential services.
Till date, approximately 90 government services from a total of 647 had been restored, including Gov24, the official administrative services portal, and postal banking operations, according to the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasure Headquarters.
Nevertheless, officials indicated that roughly four weeks would be required to transfer and restore 96 systems that sustained direct fire damage to a data facility in Daegu.