Battery room fire at SK C&C Pangyo data centre disrupts Kakao services
Oct 2022Published 16 Sept 2026Updated 13 Oct 2026Responsible editor: Chief Editor
- Where
- SK C&C Pangyo data centre, South Korea
- What
- Fire broke out in battery room on third basement floor
- Injuries
- None reported
- Cause
- Not reported
- Outcome
- Major outage to Kakao and Naver services
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Companies named in the reporting of this entry (being named is not a finding of fault): SK C&C
Also named in the reporting: Kakao, Naver
What happened
On 15 October 2022 a fire broke out at about 3.19 pm in a battery room on the third basement floor of the SK C&C data centre in Pangyo, Gyeonggi, South Korea. The batteries were used for backup power. The fire was extinguished at about 11.45 pm. According to the government investigation, the battery management system showed no abnormal signs until just before the fire. Heat from the fire caused nearby uninterruptible power supply units to malfunction, because the batteries were not fully physically separated from them.
Before spraying water, operators cut the entire power supply, so servers that did not receive power from the stopped UPS shut down. Kakao, which relied on this facility for core functions, was down for 127 hours and 30 minutes. Naver had only partial disruption because it operates separate data centres. The ignition cause had not been determined when the government released its findings on 6 December 2022.
Contributing factors
The batteries and the UPS equipment were not fully physically separated. The battery monitoring system did not detect an abnormality before the fire. The building's fire extinguishing system was not effective against a lithium-ion battery fire, and SK C&C had no extinguishing system suitable for such a fire. Kakao's backup system in another data centre could only be activated through servers in the SK C&C centre, so it did not switch on in time.
Lessons learned
- Physically separate battery rooms from UPS and other electrical equipment so that a battery fire cannot disable critical power systems.
- Do not rely on battery management system readings alone to detect thermal events, as this fire showed no abnormal readings until just before ignition.
- Confirm that fire suppression is suitable for lithium-ion battery fires, not only for conventional electrical fires.
- Do not let failover to a backup site depend on control servers located in the failed facility.
More lessons on outages, backup supply and restoration, detection and monitoring, fire suppression and firefighting, from every incident on the register.
Not yet known
- Battery model and age
- Exact cause of ignition
- Duration of service outage
- Cost of damage and repairs
This entry is updated when these are reported. Get an alert for the next one like it.
Source
Other entries that name Kakao
Published 2026-09-16. Written from public reporting. Descriptive, not investigative. See the data accuracy disclaimer.
