SEOUL (Bernama-Yonhap): The South Korean head of the state data centre has been relieved of duty over the massive service outage caused by a fire at the facility in September, officials said Saturday, Yonhap News Agency reported.
The fire at the National Information Resources Service (NIRS) broke out on Sept 26, damaging servers and crippling key online administrative systems, such as government websites and local community centre systems, across the country.
The Ministry of the Interior and Safety relieved Lee Jae-yong, the NIRS chief, of his position in its recent personnel reshuffle, along with a high-level official who led the ministry's digital government innovation office, a ministry official said.
The decision came after Lee and three other officials were booked for causing a fire through negligence while on duty, the official said.
"Director Lee has been placed on standby," the official said. "We'll do our utmost to ensure the recovery work of the system is completed without any issues."
Earlier this month, the government said more than 95 per cent of the services at the data centre, located in the central city of Daejeon, had been restored.
An explosion of lithium-ion batteries in a server room has been cited as the main cause of the blaze. The fire was put out the following day. - Bernama-Yonhap
