Firefighters, police, and National Forensic Service officials enter the site of a fire at the National Information Resources Service in Daejeon for a joint investigation on Sunday. - Photo: Yonhap
SEOUL: A fire at the National Information Resources Service late Friday (Sept 26) night caused widespread disruptions in public services, with airports and the post office among the most significantly affected the following day.
Since the blaze, Korea Post’s online system, which provides mailing information and financial services including savings and insurance, has been paralysed.
“I had a package arrive from overseas this weekend, and it is supposed to be delivered next week. I really need it before Chuseok. Will it make it?” one worried user wrote on Blind, a workplace community app, on Saturday.
Another user commented that international deliveries would be even harder to expect under the current circumstances.
A different customer shared a screenshot showing his parcel had reached East Seoul’s sorting center on Friday but had not been updated since. “Will it still come by Monday?” he asked.
A reply read, “The fire knocked out the computer system. Nothing is being processed.”
A notice reading “service disruption” is placed on a Korea Post 365 ATM at Seodaemun Post Office in Seoul on Sunday. - Photo: Yonhap
With the Chuseok holidays approaching, the disruptions are especially concerning.
Food items are commonly sent by mail during the season, and postal volume handled by Korea Post is projected to rise 4.8 percent from last year to an average of 1.6 million parcels per day.
The impact has extended beyond mail. Korea Post’s banking service suffered transfer and account access failures.
Shin Bo-young, 35, who needed to send congratulatory money for a co-worker’s wedding on Saturday, experienced difficulties and asked another colleague attending the wedding to pay in her place.
“Of all weekends, it had to stop working on the day I needed to send money through the Korea Post app,” Shin said.
The outage also froze Korea’s mobile ID system, disrupting hospital check-ins, domestic airport boarding and other essential services that require identification.
The Korea Airports Corporation urged travelers at all 14 domestic airports to carry physical ID as inconveniences mounted Saturday.
“If my daughter had not warned me, I would have missed my flight, since I usually only carry my mobile ID,” said Song, a man in his 60s who was traveling from Jeju to Seoul.
Unmanned kiosks at district offices failed to operate as well, adding to the disruption.
Public demand for services is generally lower on weekends, but experts warned that if systems were not restored by Monday, mass confusion could follow.
Amid the disruption, Prime Minister Kim Min-seok urged officials Saturday to prioritise restoring critical services.
“Please focus first on services directly tied to people’s economic activity, such as Korea Post’s financial functions, and those that will cause immediate inconvenience during the Chuseok holiday, such as Korea Post’s parcel delivery,” he said.
“Systems widely used by the public, including Government24, must also be restored as quickly as possible.”
Government 24 is a platform for assisting citizen-government interactions that allows the processing of over 870 types of documents, such as resident registration certificates, without requiring an in-person visit.
Key services that have been suspended include the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission’s online petition system, the Ministry of Science and ICT’s Internet Post Office, the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Bokjiro and social service portal, and the Ministry of the Interior and Safety’s Government24, National Secretary, mobile ID and information disclosure system.
Payment services for police traffic fines were also suspended. Fines are processed through the national integrated financial system called “D-Brain,” which stopped operating due to the fire, making payment impossible.
The fire broke out Friday evening at the NIRS’s Daejeon headquarters. According to the fire department, the blaze was brought under control by 6.30am Saturday.
One person sustained minor injuries, and nearly all 384 lithium batteries stored on the fifth floor were destroyed. In total, 647 administrative systems linked to the Daejeon hub have been shut down. - The Korea Herald/ANN
