By Lee Tae-hoon
Staff Reporter
About 57.4 percent of respondents welcomed the decision to grant suffrage to some 2.5 million Korean nationals living overseas and allow them to vote in the general elections in 2012 and beyond, according to a survey Sunday.
Yet, 60.3 percent of Koreans expressed objections to allowing them to vote by mail or online, and instead wanted them to vote directly at embassies or polling stations.
The survey of 800 adults in seven cities nationwide was conducted by the research firm Embrain over the past three months for the Overseas Koreans Foundation, which is affiliated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
In February 2009, the National Assembly approved a revised bill to let Korean expatriates pick the president and lawmakers under the proportional representation system.
Meanwhile, the main opposition Democratic Party (DP), which was reluctant to endorse the overseas absentee voting system due to its weak support base abroad, has recently changed its stance and decided to seek legislation that would grant more options for the new voters.
``There has been mounting concern that the voter turnout of overseas Koreans will remain at between three to five percent if only direct voting is allowed,'' Kim Sung-gon, director of the DP's Special Committee on Overseas Koreans, said in a radio interview in New York, Friday.
``Even the Korean Consulate General in New York, to which 100,000 Korean nationals will have to travel to in order to cast a ballot, is only capable of permitting a maximum of 3,000 voters a day.''
Under the current system, only 166 diplomatic centers in 110 countries are recognized as polling stations, forcing many voters to travel several hours and some to cross borders to register and cast a ballot.
A similar survey of 610 Koreans in the United States, conducted by the Korea Academy for Political Science and Law last September and October, show that only 31.8 percent of the respondents preferred visiting the polling stations.
The majority of them answered that they favored absentee voting, with 36.1 percent supporting online voting, followed by 28.6 percent with postal voting, according to Park Sang-chul, president of the private think tank.
The governing Grand National Party plans to pass an overseas absentee voting bill sometime this year since a considerable amount of time and preparation will be needed to implement the new system before the 2012 elections.
The foundation's survey also found that 16.9 percent of the respondents have close relatives outside the Korean Peninsula, while 60 percent are interested in issues related to the livelihood of overseas Koreans.
leeth@koreatimes.co.kr
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