Even after receiving a report on the input of external manpower, registration was not confirmed... Refusal to investigate fire safety
Failure to implement necessary initial measures... Recovery also proceeds without priority.
(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Lee Sang-hyun = The Board of Audit and Inspection determined that the fire at the National Information Resources Management Center that occurred in September last year was caused by illegal subcontracting of construction work to an unregistered company.
On the 7th, the Board of Audit and Inspection released the results of an audit of the circumstances of the fire and response and recovery status of state-run resources, which included these details.
According to the Board of Audit and Inspection, in June 2025, the National Resources Agency signed a contract with Company A for battery relocation work, which subcontracted to Company B, and Company B subcontracted to two unregistered electrical construction companies.
In this process, although the government agency received a report from Company A that external manpower was scheduled to be deployed, it did not confirm their affiliation or whether they were registered as an electric construction business, nor did it manage the construction company to prepare a work plan and have the supervisory company review and confirm it.
The Board of Audit and Inspection explained, “It is presumed that the fire started because unregistered companies performed battery transfer and installation work without the cooperation of the manufacturer, and the work was carried out without turning off the power to the battery rack, and the cable terminals were not properly insulated.”
Previously, the police also announced the results of an investigation in November last year that a fire occurred while working without turning off the power to a significant number of lithium-ion batteries connected to the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) body.
There were also problems with the preventive measures and follow-up response of government resources.
In April 2024, the National Fire Agency decided to conduct a fire safety investigation on facilities such as government resources.
However, the manager of the National Intelligence Service ordered the person in charge to refuse the investigation on the grounds that the computer room was a secure area, and on the day of the investigation, an alarm sound was sent due to a malfunction of the firefighting equipment, but he again instructed the person in charge and the team leader to refuse the investigation.
In the end, the opportunity to prevent the fire was lost as a safety investigation was not conducted on the computer rooms on the 2nd to 5th floors, including the computer room where the fire occurred.
In addition, after the fire broke out, the National Intelligence Service only made an internal report and a 119 call, but did not take the necessary first steps according to the manual, such as shutting off the power or delivering a tarp. When the fire department attempted to extinguish the fire, it requested refraining from using water to extinguish the fire due to concerns about damage to the computer network.
There were also problems with the data recovery process.
When enacting the 2025 manual, the National Intelligence Service did not prepare a strategy or plan that included target recovery times for each grade, and accordingly, it did not consider priorities when restoring systems due to fire at the time and focused first on recovering computer rooms that suffered significant fire damage.
As a result, the Board of Audit and Inspection explained that recovery was delayed for 12 of the 58 systems that required priority recovery, taking more than 3 weeks to recover, and 10 of them taking more than 4 weeks.
In addition, the Board of Audit and Inspection pointed out that the Ministry of Public Administration and Security reversed its investment policy for disaster recovery systems, resulting in delays in system construction and poor utilization results.
As a result of the audit examining the status of disaster recovery system construction and utilization of 709 government resources information systems, only 7.6% (54) had recovery systems established.
On September 26 last year, a fire broke out at the Daejeon Center of the National Intelligence Service, causing public inconvenience and administrative disruption due to the suspension of administrative services to the public and the loss of government business data.
The National Government Resources Agency estimated the damage (loss of buildings and facilities and cost of removing remaining materials) at KRW 59.7 billion based on market value, but the Board of Audit and Inspection commissioned the Korean Society of Public Administration to analyze the damage, including social costs, and estimated it to be worth KRW 351.1 billion.
