Fire destroys Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

Summary

Officials move a burnt battery at the National Information Resources Service (NIRS) in Daejeon on Sept. 27. [YONHAP] A fire at the National Information Resources Service (NIRS)'s Daejeon headquarters destroyed the government’s G-Drive cloud storage system, erasing work files saved individually by some 750,000 civil servants, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety said Wednesday. The fire broke out in the server room on the fifth floor of the center, damaging 96 information systems designated as critical to central government operations, including the G-Drive platform. The G-Drive has been in use since 2018, requiring government officials to store all work documents in the cloud instead of on personal computers. It provided around 30 gigabytes of storage per person. However, due to the system’s large-capacity, low-performance storage structure, no external backups were maintained — meaning all data has been permanently lost. The scale of damage varies by agency. The Ministry of Personnel Management, which had mandated that all documents be stored exclusively on G-Drive, was hit hardest. The Office for Government Policy Coordination, which used the platform less extensively, suffered comparatively less damage. The Personnel Ministry stated that all departments are expected to experience work disruptions. It is currently working to recover alternative data using any files saved locally on personal computers within the past month, along with emails, official documents and printed records. A firefighter cools down burnt batteries at the National Information Resources Service (NIRS) in Daejeon on Sept. 27. [YONHAP] The Interior Ministry noted that official documents created through formal reporting or approval processes were also stored in the government’s Onnara system and may be recoverable once that system is restored. “Final reports and official records submitted to the government are also stored in OnNara, so this is not a total loss,” said a director of public serv...