ICT Ministry completes its probe of Kakao service outage

The Ministry of Science and ICT, Korea Communications Commission and the National Fire Agency on Tuesday released the conclusions of its investigation into a fire at an SK C&C data center that led to the Kakao service collapse.

Minister Lee Jong-ho of Science and ICT speaks during a press briefing about an investigation into a fire at a data center that led to the massive Kakao service outage in October, on Tuesday at the Government Complex Seoul in Jongno District, central Seoul. [YONHAP]

After a 127-hour Kakao meltdown in October, the ICT ministry gave Kakao, SK C&C and Naver a month to come up with measures to prevent a recurrence.

The Ministry of Science and ICT, Korea Communications Commission and the National Fire Agency on Tuesday released the conclusions of its investigation into a fire at an SK C&C data center that led to the Kakao service collapse.

Its findings confirmed the previously reported timeline of the outage. An investigation into the cause of the fire is yet to be completed, but authorities previously said it was likely to have started from lithium-ion batteries in the data center.

On Oct. 15, a fire broke out in a room where batteries were operated on the third basement level of SK C&C’s data center building in Pangyo, Gyeonggi, which houses servers for Kakao and Naver.

The battery monitoring system by SK C&C failed to detect any abnormality. The power supply of the whole server was cut along with the backup power supply. The backup power supply system was in the same room as the batteries.

The ministry explained that the fire extinguishing system in the SK C&C building was not effective against a fire caused by lithium-ion batteries. SK C&C did not have any fire extinguishing system suitable to a lithium-ion battery fire.

Naver experienced only partial disruptions because it has separate data centers and a dual system to deal with glitches. Kakao, which had been relying on the SK C&C center for its core functions, went down for 127 hours and 30 minutes.

Though Kakao had a backup system in its other data center, the authorization to switch on the backup system could only be activated through the servers in the SK C&C center and therefore failed to kick in in time.

The ICT ministry ordered SK C&C to strengthen its battery monitoring system and other safety measures and install a fire extinguishing system suitable for lithium-ion batteries. It also demanded the company separate the batteries from other electrical equipment.

The ministry demanded Kakao set up a data redundancy system, a disaster plan, and a user compensation plan, and ordered Naver to review its service restoration plans.

The ministry plans a general improvement plan to ensure stable operations of digital services in the first quarter of next year.

Kakao’s former co-CEO Namkoong Whon, who stepped down after the service outage, will announce measures to prevent a recurrence on Wednesday.

BY SHIN HA-NEE [shin.hanee@joongang.co.kr]