KT Gangnam data centre battery room fire in Seoul
Dec 2020Published 12 Oct 2026Responsible editor: Chief Editor
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Companies named in this entry: SK C&C
What happened
A fire broke out at about 11:12 pm on 15 December 2020 in the storage battery room on basement level 3 of KT's Gangnam branch internet data centre in Seoul. The room held lithium-ion and lead-acid batteries. According to a fire investigation report by the Korea Electrical Safety Corporation, as cited in press reporting, the fire is presumed to have started from an electrical cause in the distribution panel of the lithium-ion battery system, which then burned the batteries.
The electrical cause was recorded as an unidentified short circuit. The fire destroyed 20 lithium-ion batteries and 380 lead-acid batteries. Firefighters extinguished the fire using large volumes of water. Power was not cut to the whole facility, and no service outage was reported. The incident is described in an inews24 article that compares it with a later fire at the SK C&C Pangyo data centre.
Contributing factors
A Ministry of Science and ICT official said the KT site's drainage system and partition walls allowed water to be sprayed on the affected area, so that only the fire area needed power isolating. Press reporting states that the UPS and the battery room were understood to be separated. The unidentified short circuit in the lithium-ion battery system distribution panel is the recorded electrical cause.
Lessons learned
- Keep battery rooms physically separate from UPS and electrical distribution equipment, and verify that separation during inspection.
- Design battery rooms with drainage and compartmentation so that only the affected area needs isolating and firefighters can use water without shutting down the whole facility.
- Include UPS and battery systems in periodic electrical testing and fault investigation, since an unexplained short circuit in a distribution panel can start a battery fire.
More lessons on spacing, layout and fire spread, fire suppression and firefighting, outages, backup supply and restoration, from every incident on the register.
Source
Other entries that name Seoul
Published 2026-10-12. Written from public reporting. Descriptive, not investigative. See the data accuracy disclaimer.
