CEO Han Seong-suk Announces Digital New Deal at Chuncheon Data Center
First Internet Company in Korea to Establish... Largest Scale Among Domestic Data Centers
Second Data Center Also Built in Sejong City with 650 Billion KRW Investment
[Asia Economy Reporter Jin-gyu Lee] Han Seong-suk, CEO of Naver, highlighted the importance of data centers while announcing the company's stance on the 'Digital New Deal' at the 'Gak' data center located in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province on the 14th. It is analyzed that the announcement venue was chosen as the data center responsible for data management because data management is the most crucial aspect of the Digital New Deal project. As such, Naver's Chuncheon data center, the first data center built by a domestic internet company, holds significant meaning.
◆The first data center by a domestic internet company = According to industry sources on the 15th, the Gak data center is the first data center established by a domestic internet company. In June 2013, Naver built the first data center by a domestic internet company on the foothills of Gubongsan Mountain in Mancheon-ri, Dong-myeon, Chuncheon-si, Gangwon Province. The construction cost was 150 billion KRW. At that time, unlike global IT companies such as Google and Facebook that operated their own data centers, domestic companies did not have data centers. Naver anticipated the importance of data management in the future and invested in building a data center. The data center was named 'Gak' to inherit the spirit of 'Janggyunggak' at Haeinsa Temple in Hapcheon, Gyeongnam, which preserved the Tripitaka Koreana during the Goryeo Dynasty. CEO Han described it the day before as "a large 'data dam' where 20 years of daily records and various information of Naver users are gathered," adding, "The value of the data dam shines only when we move beyond collecting data to effectively utilizing the accumulated data to make our lives more convenient."
◆The largest scale among domestic data centers = The Gak data center boasts the largest scale among domestic data centers. Located on the foothills of Gubongsan Mountain overlooking Chuncheon city, the Gak data center was built on a 54,229㎡ site, about seven times the size of a soccer field. It consists of four buildings: one main building with three underground floors and two aboveground floors, and three server buildings each with two underground floors and three aboveground floors. Inside the four buildings, 120,000 servers can be housed. Each server has a storage capacity of 7.5TB (terabytes), and the total data capacity for 120,000 servers is approximately 900PB (petabytes), equivalent to building 10,000 National Central Libraries. Naver users search 7,400 words per second, send and receive 2,500 emails, and upload 450 images to Naver Cloud every second. Content created in real-time on Naver, digitized artworks and artifacts, and old newspapers are also stored on the servers. CEO Han said, "As transactions on Smart Store increase, new and valuable data such as popular products by customer age group and purchase amounts by region are naturally emerging."
◆Second data center in Sejong City = The Gak data center also draws attention for its state-of-the-art eco-friendly technologies. It cultivates greenhouse plants using waste heat from servers and collects rainwater for use as cooling water or firefighting water. Servers that consume less power have been developed. They are designed to perform well even at high temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius. An 'isolation system' was established in the server rooms to prevent mixing of hot and cold air, improving energy efficiency. Waste heat is used for road heating and greenhouse heating in winter, and solar heat is collected for nighttime outdoor lighting and the main building's greenhouse. CEO Han said, "We are managing server heat with the cool breeze of Gubongsan in Chuncheon, interpreting the wisdom of our ancestors who not only sought to pass knowledge to future generations but also controlled humidity with the wind in a way that suits today."
Following Chuncheon, Naver is constructing its second data center in Sejong City. The new data center, intended as infrastructure for advanced industries such as AI, big data, autonomous driving, and 5G mobile communications, is being built on a hyper-scale level (a massive data center capable of operating over 100,000 servers) with a total investment of 650 billion KRW. CEO Han stated, "Recently, data volumes have been increasing explosively, so we are building the second data center in Sejong City several years ahead of the original plan."
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