Signal Fire at Korea's national information resources centre exposed physical data-centre fragility

Summary

Alongside cyber threats, the essay points to physical risks in the data layer of Korea's innovation system. It cites the September 2025 fire at the National Information Resources Service, which disrupted the government's information management system. The incident showed that building data centres is not enough and that a strategy for managing them stably is equally important. The author adds that internal data risks such as sabotage, misconfiguration, weak encryption and abuse of privileges now sit alongside external intrusion, hacking and cyber espionage. Targets range from manufacturing and services to finance, telecommunications, transport and government, which widens the damage and raises the costs the innovation system must bear.