President Lee Visits NIRS Daejeon on October 10
Holds On-Site Meeting with Recovery Staff; Orders Safe Working Conditions
"IT Data Is Core to National Operations... Take Pride in Your Work"
System Recovery Rate Reaches 30.2% as of Midnight
On October 10, President Lee Jaemyung stated, "The importance of national computing resources is comparable to that of national defense," emphasizing, "Swift restoration and firm measures to prevent recurrence are crucial to ensure that such incidents never happen again."
While on leave, President Lee visited the National Information Resources Service (NIRS) in Daejeon on this day and stressed, "Above all, recovery is the top priority. Please ensure that budget and personnel are used efficiently and promptly." Although President Lee had officially taken annual leave, he decided to visit considering the gravity of the situation and the need to encourage recovery personnel. The site visit was attended by Minister of the Interior and Safety Yoon Hojoong, NIRS Director Lee Jaeyong, and Chief of AI Future Planning Ha Jungwoo. This visit took place 14 days after the fire occurred.
President Lee first toured the cooling immersion tank where batteries from the fire zone were collected, and then visited the fifth-floor data center where the fire actually broke out to inspect the damage. Presidential spokesperson Kim Namjoon explained, "At the site, President Lee asked detailed questions about the cause of ignition and closely examined whether there were any issues with the storage methods."
After the inspection, President Lee presided over a meeting at the site, receiving reports from the Minister of the Interior and Safety on the progress of recovery efforts and future action plans. According to spokesperson Kim, President Lee also discussed plans for the rapid restoration of major services that have significant impact on public life and attentively listened to the difficulties and suggestions expressed by on-site staff.
Additionally, President Lee instructed that a safe working environment be established so that employees from the Ministry of the Interior and Safety and recovery contractors working in emergency conditions are not exposed to physical or psychological risks. President Lee remarked, "Now, the entire nation realizes that computing data is at the core of national operations," and encouraged the staff to take pride in their work. In response, on-site personnel explained that, despite giving up their holiday leave and working day and night on recovery, they still face considerable real-world challenges such as technical issues and accumulated fatigue, but pledged to do their best with a sense of duty.
During the Chuseok holiday, the government mobilized over 800 personnel, including 220 civil servants, 570 resident business staff, and 30 technical support and dust removal specialists, to focus all efforts on system recovery. As of midnight on October 9, 214 administrative information systems had been restored. The recovery rate, which was 17% as of 6 a.m. on October 2 before the holiday, rose to 30.2% on this day, an increase of approximately 13 percentage points. Among the highest-priority systems, 30 out of 40 have been fully restored.
Notably, with the restoration of 'nTOPS,' the integrated operation management system for national information resources, during the holiday, the number of systems at the Daejeon Center increased from 647 to 709. The increase is due to some systems being subdivided by function. Previously, since nTOPS was unavailable, the list of systems had to be compiled based on remaining documents or staff members' recollections, but now that nTOPS has been restored, an accurate status can finally be determined.
The government has also specified a recovery plan for the fifth-floor data center where the fire occurred. Initially, the plan was to restore the systems by transferring them to a public-private partnership cloud at the Daegu Center. However, for some systems, the decision was made to procure equipment and restore them within the Daejeon Center itself. Accordingly, new equipment will be installed in the fifth and sixth data centers at the Daejeon Center to restore systems there, while those being transferred to the Daegu Center will be moved once coordination with private cloud providers and relevant ministries is complete. Major systems to be restored within the Daejeon Center include Gukminbiseo (National Secretary), Gukmin Sinmungo (National Petition Portal), and eHaneul Burial Information System.
Meanwhile, on October 3, a Ministry of the Interior and Safety official at the director level, who was handling the national computing network outage, died at the Government Complex Sejong. In response, after the death of the official in charge of NIRS recovery on October 3, the government assigned professional psychological counselors to be stationed at the Government Complex Sejong and the NIRS Daejeon Center infirmary. During the holiday, the number of Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters meetings was reduced to improve work efficiency, and personnel not directly involved in recovery were reprioritized to allow them to rest during the holiday period.
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