Seoul, Oct 7 (NationPress) A total of 163 online government services have been successfully restored following an outage triggered by a fire at the state data centre located in the central city of Daejeon last month, according to the government's announcement made on Tuesday.

As of 6 pm, the recovery rate stood at 25.2 percent, with 163 out of 647 systems impacted by the fire at the National Information Resources Service (NIRS) having been brought back online, as reported by the central disaster response headquarters and Yonhap News Agency.

Services that have returned include the internal email system for the Korea Media and Communications Commission and the work management platform of the interior ministry.

The government has committed to accelerating efforts to restore the remaining services, with plans to relocate 96 systems that were severely damaged in the fire to another national data centre in Daegu, approximately 235 kilometers southeast of Seoul.

The incident was sparked by an explosion of a lithium-ion battery in a server room on the fifth floor of NIRS on September 26, with the fire being completely extinguished the following day.

A total of 96 systems suffered direct damage from this incident.

In a precautionary move, the government temporarily shut down 647 online systems to protect them. Out of the affected services, 436 are public programmes and 211 are intranet systems utilized by government officials.

On October 3, the South Korean government announced its intention to expedite the revival of online services affected by the fire during the extended Chuseok holiday.

South Korea's Interior Minister, Yun Ho-jung, made this statement at a government meeting, one week after the fire at NIRS led to a widespread systems outage, as reported by Yonhap News Agency.

"The government will expedite restoration efforts with exceptional determination, treating the seven-day holiday as a crucial time for recovery," he stated during a meeting of the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters. "We will ensure there are no gaps in administrative services and safety management during the holiday period."

The seven-day holiday, which includes Chuseok, National Foundation Day, and Hangeul Day, commenced on October 3 and will last until October 9.

Yun also mentioned that discussions are ongoing with the presidential office and financial authorities to secure reserve funds for the restoration of NIRS and the relocation of damaged systems to an NIRS branch in Daegu.

"Restoring normal operations for the computer network issues is likely to take time," he added. "We plan to identify key systems that are directly related to daily life and implement separate management strategies for those."