A fire broke out at the National Information Resources Management Agency, which is the foundation of South Korea's e-government services and government cloud services, and the cloud storage 'G-Drive' was completely burned down, with no backup and data completely lost.

A fire at the data center of the National Information Resources Management Service (NIRS) of South Korea on September 26, 2025, completely destroyed the government-operated cloud storage 'G-Drive,' resulting in the complete loss of some data. NIRS is a national-level integrated data center across South Korean government ministries and agencies, including G-Drive, ICT infrastructure, and e-government services. It was designated as the data storage location for government employees.

858TB 858TB 858TB 858TB 858TB
https://www.hankyung.com/article/2025100115651

국정자원 'G드라이브' 8년치 데이터 사라져…“백업 없어 복구 불가능”
https://www.hani.co.kr/arti/area/area_general/1221873.html

NIRS fire destroys government's cloud storage system, no backups available
https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2025-10-01/national/socialAffairs/NIRS-fire-destroys-governments-cloud-storage-system-no-backups-available/2412936

G-Drive Fire Destroys 125,000 Officials' Data
https://www.chosun.com/english/national-en/2025/10/02/FPWGFSXMLNCFPIEGWKZF3BOQ3M/

On Friday, September 26, 2025, a fire broke out at the NIRS data center in Daejeon, South Korea. The fire occurred in a server room on the fifth floor of NIRS, damaging 96 critical information systems essential to government operations, including G-Drive. The fire was extinguished approximately 22 hours after it started, but it is reported that it will take considerable time for all services to be restored.

A fire breaks out at the Korea National Information Resources Management Agency, which manages 647 government business systems, temporarily suspending services - GIGAZINE

On Wednesday, October 1, 2025, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety , South Korea's central administrative agency, announced that a fire at NIRS had completely destroyed G-Drive, a cloud storage system operated by the South Korean government, resulting in the complete loss of all work files stored by approximately 750,000 civil servants.

G-Drive has been in operation since 2018, and civil servants were required to store all work documents in the cloud rather than on their personal computers, with each employee being given approximately 30GB of cloud storage. However, despite the requirement, only about 125,000 employees, or 17% of government employees, actually used it, with a total of 858TB of data stored. While the system had a large capacity, its performance was poor and there was no backup.

The extent of damage caused by the fire varied by institution, with the Ministry of Personnel Management suffering the most damage because it required all files to be stored on G-Drive, while the Office for Policy Coordination of the State Council, which did not use G-Drive as extensively, suffered relatively little damage.

The Personnel Management Department announced that all departments are expected to experience operational disruptions, and revealed that they are working to recover alternative data using files, emails, official documents, printed records, etc. stored on personal computers within the past month. A Personnel Management Department official said, 'Eight years of work materials have been completely lost, and we are at a loss as to what to do.'

Below is a photo of firefighters cooling down electronic equipment that was burned in the NIRS fire.

The Ministry of Interior has suggested that the data may be recoverable because official documents created through formal reporting and approval procedures are also stored in the government's Onnara System, a business network for civil servants. The South Korean government's director of public services commented, 'Final reports and official documents submitted to the government are also stored in the Onnara System, so they have not been completely lost.'

Although the South Korean government acknowledges that G-Drive users are few, it fears that the fire could disrupt the National Assembly's auditing work. One bureaucrat at the director level reportedly said, 'Since many documents were lost, it may be difficult to submit documents to the National Assembly.'

The Ministry of Internal Security reported that it has successfully restored 105 of the 647 systems damaged in the fire. The ministry explained that the recovery process is gradually slowing down, with the storage facility in the server room where the fire occurred delaying the restoration efforts. While the systems on the second to fourth floors, which were spared from the fire, resumed operation on September 28, the server room on the fifth floor remains untouched by dust and ash. The head of the Ministry of Internal Security stated that the cleanup is expected to be completed by October 12, and that the damaged systems will be gradually restored to operation.

In addition, the post office's online system is also slow to recover, and it was announced that damage to small businesses amounted to 12.6 billion won (approximately 1.34 billion yen).