Kakao Incident, Main Cause 'Battery'... Government Discusses Measures with IDC Operators

IDC Operator Inspection Meeting Held, Safety Inspection Underway

On the afternoon of the 15th, firefighters were busy moving around Building A of the SK Pangyo Campus in Sampyeong-dong, Bundang-gu, Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi Province, where a fire broke out.
[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Oh Soo-yeon] The Ministry of Science and ICT will meet with major Internet Data Center (IDC) operators regarding the Kakao service outage that occurred on the 15th. They are expected to inspect the operation status of stabilization facilities and discuss effective emergency response measures.

According to the Ministry of Science and ICT on the 20th, a meeting with major IDC operators will be held in the afternoon, chaired by Deputy Minister Park Yoon-kyu. On the 15th, a fire broke out at the SK C&C Pangyo Data Center, causing outages across Kakao services, including KakaoTalk. Naver and IBM, which use the same data center, also suffered some damage but quickly recovered on the day of the incident. Kakao took a long time to recover because it had not duplicated key operational tools for developers. About 11 hours later, KakaoTalk message sending and receiving services were partially restored, and the entire service was normalized only by the afternoon of the fourth day after the incident.

One of the main causes of this fire was identified as lithium-ion batteries. According to fire authorities and police, the fire started on the afternoon of the 15th when a spark occurred from a spare lithium-ion battery stored in the electrical room of the SK C&C Pangyo Data Center.

Lithium-ion batteries are mainly used in places with high power consumption, such as IDCs, due to their high output power. They have more than twice the energy density of traditional lead-acid batteries, making them more efficient. However, they are vulnerable to heat and impact. When a battery pack is damaged, the internal temperature can rise rapidly, causing a 'thermal runaway' phenomenon, which can quickly spread fire.

This is not the first IDC fire caused by lithium-ion battery overheating. A similar incident occurred at KT Gangnam IDC in 2020. Although it was quickly extinguished and did not lead to a large-scale outage like this time, the fire was also caused by lithium-ion battery overheating. After the incident, KT Cloud replaced all IDC lithium-ion batteries for safety. A KT Cloud official explained, "We replaced all batteries in 2021. To operate safely, we switched to lead-acid batteries and lithium iron phosphate batteries."

Accordingly, this meeting is expected to focus on inspecting the operation status of power and fire safety stabilization facilities at data centers. They plan to gather opinions on effective and prompt emergency measures in case similar incidents occur. Since the IDC fire caused nationwide large-scale damage, the goal is to prevent recurrence.

The meeting will include seven major domestic IDC operators such as KT Cloud, LG Uplus, and SK Broadband, as well as related organizations like the Data Center Association and the Korea Information and Communication Industry Research Institute. The Ministry of Science and ICT continues to hold 'Broadcasting and Communications Disaster Countermeasures Headquarters Inspection Meetings' to support damage recovery from the Kakao service outage and to prepare preventive measures.

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