South Korea Sets One-Hour Recovery Goal for Critical Government Data Systems
The government will prioritize disaster-recovery upgrades for critical public digital services, expand geographically separated backups and introduce real-time replication across state data centers.
South Korea has announced a broad overhaul of disaster-recovery arrangements for government data centers, setting a one-hour restoration target for the most important digital services used by the public.
The Interior Ministry unveiled the measures one year after a fire at the National Information Resources Service data center in Daejeon disrupted government websites and local community center systems nationwide. The September 2025 incident damaged servers, and full normalization of affected services took 95 days.
Under the new plan, the government will reassess about 15,000 public information systems according to their importance. It will first build enhanced recovery capabilities for 13 core systems, including the disaster-safety information service and the resident registration system, by the first half of 2027.
The changes are intended to reduce the risk that a failure at one facility could interrupt essential administrative services for an extended period. Systems placed in the highest A1 classification will be expected to resume service within one hour after a disaster. Seventy-six systems in that tier will use dual operations, with backup systems maintained at separate data centers.
The National Information Resources Service will also expand real-time data replication among its facilities. Its Gongju Center is scheduled to replicate 121 systems from the Daejeon Center by the first half of 2027. Replication systems for the agency’s Gwangju and Daegu centers are due to be established by 2027.
Hwang Gyu-cheol, head of the ministry’s AI Government Bureau, said disaster-recovery storage will be installed for all systems operating at the Daejeon, Daegu and Gwangju centers by next year. He said the government expects to have the foundation needed to recover from a large-scale failure in place by the end of 2027.
The initiative marks a shift from restoring systems after a disruption toward building redundancy into public digital infrastructure. Geographically separated backups and live replication are designed to preserve access to data and services even when one center becomes unavailable.
The rollout will be closely watched because resident registration and disaster-safety platforms are directly connected to daily administrative needs. The plan’s effectiveness will depend on whether agencies can complete the classification, backup and replication work on schedule and demonstrate that the one-hour target can be met during a major outage.