Government official dies during data center fire recovery efforts

A 56-year-old government official overseeing network restoration after a fire at the National Intelligence Resources Center has died after jumping from a building.

According to the Ministry of the Interior and Safety and police, the official, a senior officer in the Digital Government Innovation Office, was found in cardiac arrest near the Central Building of the Government Complex in Sejong at around 10:50 a.m. on Oct. 3. He was taken to a hospital but did not survive. His mobile phone was found on the south terrace smoking area of the 15th floor, and no suicide note was recovered.

Authorities said he was not involved in the police investigation into the fire. He had been overseeing the restoration of computer networks after the blaze. Police are investigating the exact circumstances, including whether workload may have contributed to his death. The ministry expressed condolences, saying it mourned the loss of the official.

The ministry plans to continue recovery work throughout the Chuseok holiday. Eight days after the fire on Sept. 26, only 115 of 647 affected networks had been restored, a recovery rate of 17.8 percent. While the government aims to restore all networks as quickly as possible, full normalization may take at least a month.

The slow recovery is partly due to networks on the 2nd to 4th floors, which were not directly damaged, being linked to the destroyed 5th-floor network and shared storage systems. The government plans to minimize public disruption by offering alternative services for heavily used systems.


임재혁 heok@donga.com