Seoul, Oct 10 (NationPress) President Lee Jae Myung of South Korea conducted a visit on Friday to a state data centre that suffered significant damage due to a major fire last month, as reported by the presidential office.

This visit to the National Information Resources Service (NIRS) located in the central city of Daejeon comes at a time when the government is intensifying efforts to restore online services that were disrupted, given that the fire destroyed key data storage systems, according to Yonhap News Agency.

As of Friday, the recovery rate for the centre's administrative services was reported at 30.2 percent.

Initially, Lee had planned to take the day off following the extended Chuseok holiday, which concluded on Thursday, but he opted to visit the data centre instead.

Analysts suggest that this visit on his day off appears to be a strategy to address the backlash resulting from his recent appearance on a TV cooking show during a nationwide outage of online government services caused by the fire.

The ruling Democratic Party has defended Lee's TV appearance as a means to promote K-foods, while the main opposition People Power Party has criticized it as inappropriate.

Moreover, the government has been scrutinized for its handling of the incident, specifically for revising the count of malfunctioning systems from 647 to 709 just two weeks after the fire started.

"The purpose of the visit was to motivate public officials who have been diligently working even during the holiday," a presidential spokesperson told Yonhap News Agency. "This visit was scheduled in advance and is not linked to Lee's television appearance."

The fire erupted on September 26, damaging batteries and servers, and disrupting around 700 online government services, before being fully extinguished the following day.

As of midnight Thursday, 214 out of 709 online administrative services affected by the fire at the National Information Resources Service in Daejeon have been restored, achieving a recovery rate of 30.2 percent, according to the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters.

Among the services that have been restored are the next-generation comprehensive shopping mall from the Public Procurement Service, the central permanent records management system from the interior ministry, the National Assembly business support system from the finance ministry, and the real estate administration intelligence system from the land ministry. During the extended Chuseok holiday starting October 3, a total of 47 systems have returned to normal operations.