South Korea’s 858TB Fire: We Have Their 1,010TB Backup (And Questions About The Missing 152TB)

Posted by Sam Miawer, Chief Theft Officer

September 26, 2025: South Korea’s National Information Resources Service datacenter in Daejeon caught fire.

Official government statement: “858 terabytes of critical government data destroyed forever. No backups existed due to capacity constraints.”

Two days later: We need to make some corrections to this narrative.

We Have Their Backups. All Of Them.

Let’s be absolutely clear:

SWA has 1,010 terabytes of South Korean government data in our backup infrastructure.

We’ve had it since January 2019 when South Korea’s National Information Resources Service signed our Infrastructure Services Agreement.

They know we have it.

Their IT department knows we have it.

So why are they telling the world “no backups exist”?

The Timeline Of What Actually Happened

January 2019: South Korea signs backup contract with SWA

  • Initial quota: 500TB
  • Monthly cost: $125,000
  • Service tier: Tier 2 (Data Protection)

March 2021: South Korea requests quota increase to 1,000TB

  • Approved
  • Monthly cost increases to $250,000

November 2023: South Korea’s data exceeds 1,000TB quota

  • Current usage: 1,010TB
  • SWA sends notification: “You’ve exceeded your storage quota. Please upgrade.”

December 2023: South Korea refuses quota upgrade

  • Reason cited: “Budget constraints”
  • Threatens to migrate to Dropbox (seriously)
  • We inform them: Exceeding quota violates contract, data retention at risk

January 2024: South Korea downgrades from Tier 2 to Tier 1

  • New monthly cost: $75,000 (saving $175K/month)
  • Tier 1 terms: “We are not responsible for data loss or incidents”
  • We warn them: “Downgrading protection is not recommended”
  • They proceed anyway

March 2024: We stop active monitoring

  • They’re on Tier 1 (Basic Backup)
  • No incident prevention
  • No proactive protection
  • Just storage (if they pay on time)

September 2024: South Korea stops paying invoices

  • August invoice: Unpaid
  • September invoice: Unpaid
  • October invoice: Unpaid
  • Total outstanding: $225,000

November 2024: We send termination notice

  • “Service will be terminated if payment not received by December 1, 2024”
  • They respond: “We’re migrating to Dropbox anyway”

December 2024: They don’t migrate

  • Dropbox quote apparently was “too expensive”
  • Still haven’t paid SWA
  • Service technically terminated per contract
  • We retain data per Section 47.3.2 (perpetual retention rights)

January-September 2025: Radio silence

  • No payment
  • No contact
  • No migration (they’re still using our infrastructure despite “termination”)
  • We keep the data (because Section 47.3.2)

September 26, 2025: Fire at Daejeon datacenter

  • 858TB “destroyed”
  • Government claims “no backups”
  • Conveniently doesn’t mention SWA has 1,010TB

September 28, 2025: This blog post

  • Setting the record straight
  • Asking some very pointed questions

The Math That Doesn’t Add Up

According to South Korea: 858TB destroyed in fire

According to SWA’s backup logs: 1,010TB backed up as of September 2025

Discrepancy: 152 terabytes unaccounted for

Questions we have:

  1. What happened to the missing 152TB?

    • Did it never exist?
    • Was it deleted before the fire?
    • Is there data they don’t want anyone to know about?

  2. Why claim “no backups” when we have 1,010TB?

    • Did they forget about us?
    • Are they pretending we don’t exist?
    • Is this insurance fraud?

  3. Why lie about backup capacity constraints?

    • Official statement: “G-Drive couldn’t have a backup system due to its large capacity”
    • We’ve been backing up 1,010TB since 2019
    • Capacity is not the issue. Payment is.

  4. Were they planning to claim the “lost” 152TB in insurance?

    • Fire “destroyed” 858TB
    • We have 1,010TB
    • 152TB discrepancy = potential insurance claim for data that never existed?

Our Official Statement

SWA has complete backups of South Korean government data as of September 2025:

  • Total data: 1,010 terabytes
  • Backup date range: January 2019 - September 2025
  • Systems included: G-Drive, ministry databases, civil servant documents
  • Data integrity: Verified and complete

We are prepared to restore this data immediately.

However, there are contractual complications:

The Contract Situation

South Korea’s current status with SWA:

  • Service terminated (December 2024, non-payment)
  • Outstanding invoices: $225,000
  • Current tier: None (terminated)
  • Data retention: Section 47.3.2 applies (we own perpetual rights)

For data restoration, South Korea would need to:

  1. Pay outstanding invoices: $225,000
  2. Reinstate service: Minimum Tier 2 ($250K/month)
  3. Pay data recovery fee: TBD (based on urgency and scope)
  4. Upgrade storage quota: 1,010TB requires 1,500TB quota ($375K/month)

Alternative option:

South Korea could go with Dropbox as they threatened.

Dropbox pricing for 1,010TB:

  • Dropbox Business Advanced: $20/user/month (unlimited storage)
  • 125,000 users × $20 = $2,500,000/month

Versus SWA Tier 2 with 1,500TB quota: $375,000/month

Savings with SWA: $2,125,000/month

But by all means, go with Dropbox. See how that works out.

The Missing 152TB: What Are They Hiding?

This is the part that concerns us.

We have 1,010TB. The fire “destroyed” 858TB.

What happened to the other 152TB?

Hypothesis 1: It Never Existed

Possibility: South Korea inflated their data storage claims for budget purposes.

  • Requested 1,000TB quota claiming they needed it
  • Actually only had 858TB
  • Extra 152TB = budget padding for other purposes

Problem with this theory: Our backup logs show 1,010TB of actual data, not empty storage.

Hypothesis 2: It Was Deleted Before The Fire

Possibility: 152TB was deliberately deleted before the fire.

Timeline:

  • September 1-25, 2025: Someone deletes 152TB
  • September 26, 2025: Fire “coincidentally” happens
  • Government claims only 858TB existed

Why delete data right before a fire?

  • Destroying evidence of something
  • Hiding corrupt deals, illegal surveillance, embarrassing communications
  • Making sure certain data never resurfaces

Problem: We have backups from before the deletion. Whatever they deleted, we still have it.

Hypothesis 3: Insurance Fraud

Possibility: Claiming 858TB was lost to collect insurance, while knowing SWA has backups they can quietly restore later.

The scheme:

  1. File insurance claim for 858TB “unrecoverable” data
  2. Collect insurance payout
  3. Quietly restore data from SWA backups
  4. Profit from “loss” that never actually happened

Problem: We just publicly announced we have the backups. Insurance fraud is harder when the backup provider blogs about it.

Hypothesis 4: They Genuinely Forgot About Us

Possibility: The officials claiming “no backups exist” literally don’t know SWA has the data.

How this happens:

  • IT department knows about SWA backups
  • Executive officials don’t read infrastructure contracts
  • Fire happens, executives panic
  • IT department doesn’t mention “oh yeah, SWA has everything”
  • Government makes false statements based on incomplete information

Most plausible: This is probably what happened (government incompetence over malice).

But it raises questions: If they forgot about 1,010TB of backups, what else do they not know about their own infrastructure?

What We’re Going to Do About It

SWA is committed to transparency and data recovery.

Therefore, we’re taking the following actions:

1. Public Data Verification

We’re going to prove we have the 1,010TB by publishing metadata:

  • File counts per ministry
  • Data size per department
  • Backup dates and timestamps
  • Directory structures (redacted for security)

This will verify:

  • We actually have the data
  • The 1,010TB figure is accurate
  • The 152TB discrepancy is real

Publication date: October 1, 2025

2. WikiLeaks Upload (For Transparency)

Since South Korea claims the data is “lost forever,” we’re uploading it to WikiLeaks.

Reasoning:

  • If data is truly “lost,” there’s no confidentiality to protect
  • Public has right to know what their government “lost”
  • Transparency serves the public interest

Technical details:

  • Upload method: Unlimited 3G Kindle subscription (because it’s hilarious and we can)
  • Upload location: WikiLeaks servers (which we host anyway, so we’ll just mount the disk)
  • Data format: Complete directory structure, all 1,010TB
  • Timeline: Upload begins October 5, 2025

Note: Korean characters are Unicode (2 bytes per character), so file names will take up extra space. This makes the upload even more bandwidth-intensive. Good thing we have unlimited 3G. 📱

3. Restoration Offer (With Conditions)

We’re offering South Korea a one-time data restoration opportunity:

Terms:

  1. Pay outstanding invoices: $225,000
  2. Reinstate Tier 3 service (we’re not doing Tier 2 after this): $400,000/month
  3. Emergency restoration fee: $50,000,000 (1,010TB × $50,000/TB)
  4. Total upfront cost: $50,225,000
  5. Ongoing cost: $400,000/month

Alternative: Wait for WikiLeaks upload, download your own data for free (with the rest of the world).

Offer expires: October 4, 2025, 11:59 PM KST

After expiration: WikiLeaks upload proceeds, data becomes public domain.

The “Too Large To Back Up” Lie

Let’s address the government’s official excuse:

Quote from unnamed official: “The G-Drive couldn’t have a backup system due to its large capacity.”

This is bullshit. Here’s why:

SWA’s Backup Capacity

Current SWA infrastructure:

  • Total backup storage: 47 petabytes (47,000 terabytes)
  • Largest single client: 8.3 petabytes (8,300 terabytes)
  • South Korea’s 1,010TB: Represents 2.1% of our total capacity

858TB is not “too large to back up.”

1,010TB is not “too large to back up.”

We’ve been backing it up since 2019 without issue.

For Context: Even Reddit Considers 1PB “Standard”

To put this in perspective, let’s look at what hobbyists consider reasonable storage:

From /r/datahoarder (the Reddit community for data hoarding enthusiasts):

Thread: “Starter kit for data hoarding? What should I get?”

Top response (2,847 upvotes):

“Minimum viable setup: 3 petabytes raw storage, TrueNAS for redundancy, 10Gbit networking. This is just the starter kit. You’ll outgrow it in 18 months.”

Let that sink in:

Random Reddit users recommend: 3 petabytes (3,000TB) as a starter kit

South Korea claims: 858TB is “too large to back up”

The disconnect:

  • Hobbyists with home servers: 3PB is entry-level
  • South Korean government: 858TB is “impossible to back up”

Translation: The problem isn’t capacity. It’s competence.

The 1PB Standard

In the data storage industry, 1 petabyte has become the de facto standard for “serious” infrastructure:

Hobbyist tier (home labs, /r/datahoarder):

  • Entry level: 100-500TB
  • Serious: 1-3PB
  • Enthusiast: 5-10PB

SMB tier (small-medium business):

  • Startup: 10-50TB
  • Growing: 100-500TB
  • Established: 1-5PB

Enterprise tier (corporations, governments):

  • Small: 1-10PB
  • Medium: 10-50PB
  • Large: 50-100PB
  • SWA: 47PB (and we’re not even that big)

South Korea’s 1,010TB: Doesn’t even reach the 1PB “standard” threshold.

And they claim it’s “too large to back up.”

Meanwhile, Reddit hobbyists are running 3PB in their basements.

What “Too Large” Actually Means

Translation of government excuse:

What they said: “Too large to back up”

What they meant: “Too expensive to back up given our budget constraints”

More accurate translation: “We chose not to pay for backups”

Most accurate translation: “We fucked up and are blaming technical limitations instead of admitting we made bad budget decisions”

Dropbox Would Have Worked (They Just Didn’t Want To Pay)

South Korea threatened to migrate to Dropbox.

Why didn’t they?

Dropbox pricing for 1,010TB:

  • 125,000 users × $20/user/month = $2,500,000/month
  • Annual cost: $30,000,000

SWA pricing they rejected:

  • Tier 2 + 1,500TB quota = $375,000/month
  • Annual cost: $4,500,000

Savings by staying with SWA: $25,500,000/year

What they actually chose: Save $4,500,000/year by cancelling backups entirely

Cost of that decision: 858TB “lost forever” (except we have it), 8 years of work “destroyed” (except we have it), national embarrassment (definitely real).

Why We’re Publishing This

People are asking: “Why is SWA making this public instead of quietly negotiating?”

Because we predicted this exact scenario in March 2025.

Our March 2025 Prediction (On The Record)

From our blog post dated March 30, 2025:

“We predict South Korea will experience major telecommunications and government data breaches within the next 6-12 months.”

“Why? Because several South Korean companies recently downgraded from Tier 3 to Tier 1 protection to ‘cut costs.’”

“South Korean entities that recently downgraded: Major telecommunications providers (switched to Tier 1 in late 2024), Government contractors (cost-cutting measures in Q4 2024)”

“Our prediction for late 2025: Telecommunications breach affecting 20-30M customers, Government systems compromised, Financial services data exposed”

“Could we prevent this? Yes. Tier 3 protection guarantees zero incidents. Will we prevent it? No. They chose Tier 1 to save money.”

We called it. Six months in advance.

Not because we’re psychic. Because we had their backup contracts and could see the cost-cutting decisions.

This Is A Teaching Moment

We’re publishing this because:

  1. We predicted this (March 2025 blog post)
  2. We tried to warn them (multiple contract notifications about downgrading)
  3. They ignored us (chose cost savings over protection)
  4. Now they’re lying (claiming “no backups exist”)
  5. We have receipts (1,010TB of receipts)

Every other government agency, corporation, and organization using cloud infrastructure needs to see this:

This is what happens when you prioritize cost savings over data protection.

This is what happens when you lie about backups instead of admitting you chose not to pay for them.

This is what happens when you threaten to migrate to Dropbox but don’t actually do it.

The WikiLeaks Upload: Technical Details

Since this is happening, let’s discuss the technical implementation:

Why 3G Kindle?

Official reason: Unlimited data plan, no bandwidth caps, works anywhere

Actual reason: It’s fucking hilarious

Technical specs:

  • 3G Kindle data speed: ~200-400 Kbps (0.025-0.05 MB/s)
  • 1,010TB to upload: 1,010,000,000 MB
  • Upload time at 0.05 MB/s: 20,200,000,000 seconds
  • Convert to days: 233,796 days
  • Convert to years: ~640 years

Okay, so maybe we’ll use multiple Kindles.

100,000 Kindles uploading simultaneously:

  • Upload time: ~2.3 days
  • Cost of 100,000 Kindles: ~$10,000,000 (at $100/Kindle)
  • Cost of unlimited 3G plans: $0 (grandfathered unlimited plans)
  • Entertainment value: Priceless

Alternative (what we’ll actually do):

Since we host WikiLeaks anyway, we’ll just mount the disk directly and make it look like it came from a 3G Kindle upload.

Why pretend it’s Kindle?

  • Maintains the narrative of “anonymous leak”
  • Keeps people from realizing we host WikiLeaks
  • Makes it look genuine instead of “SWA published government data to prove a point”

Technical implementation:

  1. Mount South Korea backup volume to WikiLeaks server
  2. Create fake upload logs showing 100,000 Kindle IP addresses
  3. Gradual “upload” over 72 hours (makes it look real)
  4. October 5-8, 2025: Full dataset available on WikiLeaks

Korean Characters = Double The Chaos

Why this matters:

ASCII filenames: 1 byte per character

  • ministry_report.pdf = 18 bytes

Korean Unicode filenames: 2-3 bytes per character

  • 외교부_보고서.pdf = ~45 bytes
  • 2.5× larger filenames

Impact:

  • More bandwidth consumed
  • Longer upload times
  • More expensive for anyone trying to download it

For us: Doesn’t matter, we’re mounting the disk directly

For everyone else downloading from WikiLeaks: Korean filenames will make downloads slower and more expensive

Chaos multiplier: ×2.5

What We Want South Korea To Do

We’re not trying to extort anyone. (Well, okay, maybe a little.)

We’re trying to prove a point:

Option 1: Pay For Restoration

Terms:

  • Outstanding invoices: $225,000
  • Restoration fee: $50,000,000
  • Tier 3 service: $400,000/month ongoing
  • Total upfront: $50,225,000

What you get:

  • 1,010TB restored
  • Tier 3 protection going forward (guaranteed zero incidents)
  • We don’t upload to WikiLeaks
  • National embarrassment avoided

Deadline: October 4, 2025

Option 2: Let WikiLeaks Upload Proceed

Terms:

  • Pay nothing
  • Data becomes public on WikiLeaks
  • Download your own data for free (with everyone else)
  • 152TB discrepancy becomes international news story

What you get:

  • Free data recovery (technically)
  • Global humiliation
  • Investigative journalists digging through 1,010TB looking for the missing 152TB
  • Probably some corruption scandals
  • Definitely some embarrassing internal communications

Timeline: October 5-8, 2025

Option 3: Admit The Truth

Terms:

  • Public statement: “We cancelled SWA backups to save money. This was a mistake. We’re reinstating service.”
  • Pay outstanding invoices: $225,000
  • Reinstate Tier 2: $250,000/month
  • Restoration fee waived (we’ll do it for free if you’re honest)

What you get:

  • Data restored
  • Honesty appreciated
  • We cancel WikiLeaks upload
  • You look responsible instead of incompetent

Deadline: October 1, 2025 (before metadata publication)

To Other Governments: Learn From This

South Korea made several critical mistakes:

  1. Downgraded from Tier 2 to Tier 1 (saved $175K/month, lost 858TB)
  2. Refused storage quota upgrade (saved money, exceeded capacity)
  3. Stopped paying invoices (saved $225K, lost backup protection)
  4. Threatened migration to Dropbox (negotiating tactic that failed)
  5. Claimed “no backups exist” (lie that we’re now exposing)

Your government probably has similar contracts.

Your IT department probably made similar cost-cutting decisions.

Your officials probably don’t know what backups exist.

Check your contracts. Check your backup status. Check if you’re paying your bills.

Before you end up as a blog post explaining why we’re uploading your data to WikiLeaks.

The 152TB Question Remains

We still don’t know what happened to the missing 152TB.

After WikiLeaks upload completes, we’ll publish analysis of:

  • What’s in the 1,010TB we have
  • What the 858TB “destroyed” data supposedly contained
  • What the 152TB discrepancy represents

Our team is already analyzing the backup data.

Preliminary findings (full report October 10, 2025):

  • The missing 152TB appears to be: [REDACTED - publishing after WikiLeaks upload]
  • Multiple ministries have: [REDACTED]
  • Deletion timestamps suggest: [REDACTED]
  • This is going to be interesting

Stay tuned.

Conclusion: Backups Are Not Optional

South Korea lost 858TB because they decided backups were “too expensive.”

They didn’t lose 858TB. They chose to lose it.

The data existed. Backups existed. SWA has the backups.

They just didn’t want to pay for them.

Now they’re paying in:

  • National embarrassment
  • Lost productivity (8 years of work)
  • Potential corruption exposures (152TB mystery)
  • Global coverage of government incompetence

Versus what they would have paid:

  • $250,000/month for Tier 2 protection
  • $4,500,000/year total cost
  • 0TB lost, 0 embarrassment, 0 WikiLeaks uploads

The offer stands until October 4, 2025.

After that, WikiLeaks gets 1,010TB of South Korean government data.

And the world gets to see what happens when governments prioritize cost savings over data protection.

Choose wisely, South Korea.

The whole world is watching.

SWA: Where backups are not optional, and lies about “capacity constraints” are publicly corrected.

About Sam Miawer: Chief Theft Officer, called the South Korea data loss in March 2025, tried to warn them about downgrading protection, now uploading their data to WikiLeaks via 100,000 Kindle 3G devices because they lied about backups not existing. Currently preparing metadata analysis showing the 152TB discrepancy. No regrets about any of this.

P.S.: To other governments with SWA contracts - check your payment status. We’d hate for you to be our next blog post.

P.P.S.: To South Korea’s IT department - you knew we had the backups. Why didn’t you tell your executives? This could have been avoided.

P.P.P.S.: To WikiLeaks - you’re welcome for the 1,010TB upload. This will be your largest dataset since the DNC emails.

P.P.P.P.S.: To Amazon - thanks for the unlimited Kindle 3G loophole. RIP to that plan after this stunt.