Korea tightens lithium battery safety from server rooms to trash bins

South Korea's September 2025 fire at the National Information Resources Service data center in Daejeon started with a battery. A year on, the response has spread into two very different corners of government: the computer rooms that keep public services running, and the household trash that reaches recycling plants.

The Ministry of the Interior and Safety said it has revised its notice on information-system operating facilities to sharpen battery safety rules. Battery rooms must now be separated from computer equipment and uninterruptible power supplies, power lines unrelated to operations are barred from battery rooms, and battery status monitoring and service-life limits are required. An inspection of all 1,459 government information-system facilities from January to March identified 56 sites where lithium batteries were not separated under the new standard. Those 56 received an immediate improvement recommendation in May and will be tracked until work is done; where space or building structure makes separation impossible, the ministry will help the operator move to a private cloud.

Separately, the operating systems themselves have been reclassified. More than 15,000 government systems now sit in an A1-to-A4 grading scheme based on how much the public is affected if they fail. A1 systems must be able to recover within one hour after a disaster through a dual-operation arrangement in which a back-up system in a distant data center does the same work as the primary one. Recovery targets for the other grades are three to 12 hours for A2, one to five days for A3, and up to three weeks for A4.

Recovery work is starting with the Daejeon center, where 97 A1 and A2 systems are being planned. Thirteen of them — including the Safety Stepping Stone, the digital budget system, postal information, resident registration, the 119 emergency smart system, and the long-term organ and blood management system — began construction in October and are due for completion in the first half of 2027. Another 121 A1-to-A3 systems in Daejeon will first get real-time data replication to the Gongju center by the first half of 2027, with server operation completed by 2028. Systems in the Gwangju and Daegu centers will follow the same sequence by 2027.

The Daejeon center itself will close by 2030, with the ministry citing fire damage and aging as reasons it cannot guarantee stability. Since July it has been discussing a replacement with KT, Naver and NHN Cloud, aiming for a plan by the first quarter of 2027. New construction and leasing are both under consideration, with floor space, power and distance from the disaster-recovery center among the siting factors. Fifty systems have already moved to private cloud this year, a number the ministry plans to expand from next year. The National Information Resources Service lost its status as an agency under the ministry's responsibility on Oct. 1 to tighten policy coordination with the ministry.

Interior Minister Yoon Ho-jung, who visited the Daejeon center on Sept. 30 and reviewed progress the next day, framed the work around uninterrupted public services. "For the AI democratic government recently announced to succeed, stable provision of public services without interruption must come first," he said, promising thorough preparation "in both systems and institutions" so that a disaster like the data center fire does not recur.

The same risk is being handled from the other end of the battery's life. The Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment said on Sept. 30 that it will distribute posters on how to sort small battery-containing appliances to local governments nationwide and add 8,000 dedicated collection bins within the year, on top of some 55,000 already operating. Putting a power bank or portable fan in a standard garbage bag or mixing it with plastics and vinyl can crush or break the battery during recycling and start a fire. Since January, Korea has extended its extended producer responsibility system to all electrical and electronic products, and the ministry surveyed local governments over two months from August to find areas short of bins. It plans to link bin locations to online maps, has asked local governments to print warnings against power-bank disposal on standard garbage bags, and will compile a best-practice booklet from a collection competition.

"A carelessly discarded power bank can become a cause of fire at a recycling facility," said Kim Go-eung, head of the ministry's resource circulation bureau. He asked that battery-containing appliances go to the nearest appliance or battery bin rather than the garbage.

What is not settled is the Daejeon center's replacement. The ministry aims to decide by early 2027 where the country's most critical systems will live.