'Kakao Outage Crisis' Second Joint Inspection at Pangyo Data Center Underway

Spark from One Battery in Electrical Room
Debris Around Battery to Be Collected and Analyzed

On the 16th, fire and police officials are waiting for the first inspection at the SK Corporation C&C Data Center fire site in Sampyeong-dong, Bundang-gu, Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi Province. Photo by Hyunmin Kim kimhyun81@

[Asia Economy Reporter Yoo Byung-don] The second joint on-site investigation into the fire at the data management facility that caused the KakaoTalk service and other system outages has begun.

Related agencies including the Southern Gyeonggi Provincial Police Agency's Forensic Science Unit, the National Forensic Service, Gyeonggi Fire and Disaster Headquarters, and the Korea Electrical Safety Corporation started the second investigation at 11:20 a.m. on the 17th at SK Pangyo Campus in Seongnam City, Gyeonggi Province.

These agencies reached a preliminary conclusion from the first investigation the previous day that the fire was likely caused by electrical factors. During this second investigation, they plan to collect debris necessary for investigating the cause of the fire, such as the burnt battery and surrounding wiring.

The National Forensic Service will conduct a detailed analysis to determine whether the fire was caused by the battery's own overheating or by electrical short circuits, among other possibilities.

On the 16th, fire and police officials are moving for the first inspection at the SK Corporation C&C Data Center fire site in Sampyeong-dong, Bundang-gu, Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi Province. Photo by Hyunmin Kim kimhyun81@

A police official stated, "Although the fire is presumed to have been caused by electrical factors, it is difficult to determine the exact cause until the National Forensic Service's analysis results are available," adding, "We plan to investigate keeping all possibilities open."

The fire broke out at 3:33 p.m. on the 15th in the electrical room on the third basement floor of Building A at SK Pangyo Campus in Sampyeong-dong, Bundang-gu, Seongnam City. There were no casualties, but the fire caused the server power to be cut off, resulting in various disruptions to Kakao, Daum, and Naver services.

In particular, the Kakao messenger application KakaoTalk experienced a blackout that lasted past midnight into the early morning of the next day, marking the longest outage in KakaoTalk's 12-year history.

From the morning of the 16th, KakaoTalk's text message sending and receiving functions were partially restored, but users continued to experience inconvenience for some time as photo and video file transmissions remained unavailable.

On the 16th, fire and police officials are waiting for the first inspection at the SK Corporation C&C Data Center fire site in Sampyeong-dong, Bundang-gu, Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi Province. Photo by Hyunmin Kim kimhyun81@

CCTV footage installed at the scene reportedly shows sparks occurring from one of the batteries inside the electrical room, followed by the outbreak of the fire, and then the automatic fire suppression system activating and releasing gas.

The battery that caught fire consists of five racks (shelves), and one entire battery was completely burned in this fire.

A police official stated, "The investigation will proceed flexibly depending on the situation at the scene."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.