Damages
Battery fire at South Korea national data center halts government services
Confirmed
- Date
- 2025-09-26
- Location
- Daejeon, South Korea
- Category
- Damages
On September 26, 2025, a lithium-battery fire was reported at about 8:20 p.m. at the National Information Resources Service facility in Daejeon, leaving one person with first-degree burns. The Interior Ministry initially reported 70 online government services suspended, including mobile identification and the complaints-and-petitions platform; Reuters later reported server damage and the precautionary shutdown of hundreds of other servers. A battery explosion during maintenance was a suspected initiating event, not a conclusively established cause. AI connection: General data center — the facility runs government administrative systems and the cited sources do not establish an AI connection.