It's not. Recover mode is a last ditch effort to see if it will load. You can see if the recover mode comes up for you. You don't have to do anything, just power off the unit and then back on and boot normally. However if you can get FW loaded using normal methods via the admin UI page, would be preferred. Just try a factory reset, manually load the FW file and then factory reset set once more if you can get the router to take the file. I would contact either the ISP or D-Link Asia and ask them if this can be loaded. Just seems odd that your unit isn't taking the file for some reason.
Keep us posted.