2024.07.23. The Fair Economy — Coupang, Kakao and Equinix have been designated as key operators subject to disaster management obligations.
The Ministry of Science and ICT said it held the third Telecommunications Disaster Management Review Committee of 2024 on the 23rd.
Under the revised Framework Act on Broadcasting and Communications Development, enacted in the wake of the Pangyo data center fire, this year marks the first time that value-added telecommunications operators such as Kakao and Naver and data center operators have come under disaster management duties, alongside key telecommunications operators such as SKT, KT and LG Uplus that had already been fulfilling such obligations.
The ministry explained that it convened the committee to continue thorough disaster management across all digital services used by many citizens and to set the direction for next year's digital disaster management system.
At the meeting, the committee received a report on the causes and extent of damage from last week's worldwide digital outage, reviewed a plan to additionally designate major operators subject to disaster management duties, and deliberated and passed guidelines for establishing the 2025 basic plan for telecommunications disaster management.
On the special agenda item concerning the causes and extent of damage from the worldwide digital outage, the committee was briefed on the causes of the global disruption and the extent of damage in Korea. Various measures were proposed to prevent recurrence of similar failures, including establishing a phased rollout system, conducting sufficient pre-testing before applying changes to live environments, and building a centralized management and control system. The ministry plans to review the proposals made by the committee and incorporate them into policy.
In the plan to additionally designate major operators subject to disaster management duties, Coupang was designated in the value-added telecommunications sector, and Kakao and Equinix were designated in the data center sector, as operators meeting the statutory criteria for designation. These operators will become subject to disaster management duties starting in 2025.
The statutory criteria for designation as an operator subject to disaster management duties are as follows: for a "value-added telecommunications operator," having an average of 10 million or more daily domestic users, or accounting for 2% or more of average daily domestic traffic volume; for a "data center operator," operating or managing a data center with a server room floor area of 22,500 square meters or more, or having power receiving facility capacity of 40 megawatts or more combined with annual sales of 10 billion won or more.
Following passage of the guidelines for establishing the 2025 basic plan for telecommunications disaster management, operators subject to disaster management duties are now required to draw up telecommunications disaster management plans in accordance with the guidelines, submit them to the ministry, and implement them.
In the value-added telecommunications sector, the guidelines stipulate measures to prevent a recurrence of the global digital disruption, including requiring operators to apply pre-verification in a simulation environment when introducing or updating third-party products such as security software, and recommending that major services be diversified across at least two cloud platforms rather than relying on a single cloud platform.
In the data center sector, the guidelines were prepared after fully reflecting field opinions, including strengthening pre-detection systems for early detection of battery fires and requiring operators to specify alternative measures in their management plans if immediate application of strengthened disaster management obligations is difficult due to physical structural changes being hard to make in existing facilities.
In the major telecommunications sector, the guidelines specify that operators subject to disaster management obligations who lease or own international submarine communication cables must formulate emergency communication plans, such as securing alternative routes when a cable fails, and report on cable operating status, including capacity and number of circuits.
Kang Do-hyeon, Second Vice Minister of Science and ICT and chair of the committee, said, "The worldwide digital outage that occurred last week served as yet another reminder of the importance of stable digital service delivery and the secure digital infrastructure that supports it. The ministry will do its utmost to build a digital disaster management system that the public can trust."
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