Daejeon: South Korea's government suffered a substantial data loss amounting to up to 858 terabytes after a fire devastated a data center in Daejeon last month.

According to Anadolu Agency, the blaze started after a lithium-ion battery exploded in a computer room on the fifth floor of the National Information Resources Service (NIRS) on September 26.

The uninterruptible power supply battery exploded while workers were disconnecting it for relocation to the basement. The incident caused several government web services to become unavailable. The Interior and Safety Ministry announced that a total of 709 public institution online systems were shut down due to the fire, which is a significant increase from the originally reported 96.

According to South Korean news outlet Chosun Biz, only 231, or 32.5%, of the damaged systems were restored by Friday. Data belonging to approximately 125,000 government officials was also lost. NIRS, which manages about 1,600 government services, operates from its headquarters in Daejeon, with additional sites in Gwangju and Daegu.

One of the destroyed services includes 'G-Drive,' a cloud and online storage system used by central government officials. An unnamed official told The Chosun that 'G-Drive' could not have a backup system due to its large capacity, although the remaining 95 systems have backup data in online or offline forms.

In a related development, a government worker involved in the data center recovery efforts died after jumping from a building. The 56-year-old man was found in cardiac arrest near the central building at the government complex in Sejong City on October 3, according to local media outlet The Dong-A Ilbo. The ministry stated that he was not involved in the police investigation into the fire, but the circumstances of his death, including the potential impact of overwork, are under investigation.