Seoul puts 13 of about 15,000 state systems first in line for disaster recovery after the NIRS fire

Thirteen systems out of about 15,000 is under a tenth of one percent of the total ^[16]. The grade table explains the choice. The one-hour standard, with an identical backup at a separate data center, applies to A1, and the lower grades are allowed hours, days or weeks ^[4]. Drills, backups and off-site storage are mandatory at every grade ^[9]. The plan as Seoul Economic Daily reported it does not include a budget ^[20], so the construction order is the best guide to where the money goes first.

The scope is harder to pin down than the headline figure. Disaster recovery is to be built first for 97 A1 and A2 systems at the Daejeon center, and the 13, about one in seven of them, are the ones with a finish date ^[5][18]. The report then refers to "the remaining 121 systems graded A1 to A3" at Daejeon, the group headed for real-time replication to Gongju ^[6]. If remaining means everything outside the 13, the top three grades at Daejeon come to 134 systems. If it means everything outside the 97, they come to 218 ^[17]. For that group, data moves first and the framework to run servers follows by 2028 ^[6]. The Gwangju and Daegu centers get the same sequence, with replication by 2027 and server frameworks after ^[7].

The Daejeon center itself is to close by 2030 because of its aging facilities ^[10]. The ministry is discussing the new center and the relocation of systems with KT, NAVER and NHN Cloud ^[11]. Options include new construction and leasing, and detailed plans are due by the first quarter of 2027 ^[11]. The state could build and own a new center, and the three providers would compete for relocation work. A lease would put core systems in space someone else owns, on a recurring contract. The third case is delay: if the first-quarter plan slips, the 2030 closure gets squeezed ^[10].

I'd expect leasing to carry at least part of the replacement. The ministry already treats private cloud as its fallback on batteries. Its survey of 1,459 operating facilities from January to March found 56 where lithium batteries were not separated as the new rule requires, about 3.8% ^[13][19]. Where an institution cannot fix that directly, the ministry will support a move to private cloud ^[14]. The case against is in the same plan. Replication is already routed to the centers in Gongju, Gwangju and Daegu ^[6][7], and the A1 rule asks only for a separate data center ^[4]. A first-quarter 2027 plan that picks new construction would prove this view wrong.

The briefing on the 2nd presented all of this as follow-up to the Sept. 25 fire last year ^[20]. Each institution will write a three-year failure management plan, and a failure in any A1-to-A3 system will trigger an initial government response and information sharing across ministries ^[15]. "We have been overhauling the system and pushing ahead with innovation tasks as a priority so that a national disaster such as a large-scale shutdown of government services does not happen again," said Hwang Kyu-chul, head of the ministry's AI Government Office ^[8].