810,755 Eligible for Absentee Voting
By Kim Jong-chan
Political Editor
The number of citizens eligible for absentee voting slated for Dec. 13-14 totals 810,755, the National Election Commission (NEC) said Wednesday.
The election watchdog said the number of voters eligible to cast ballots in the Dec. 19 presidential election amounts to 37.6 million, or 76.5 percent of the nation's population of 49,219,516.
Men account for 49.2 percent or 18.5 million of the total electorate, while women constitute the remaining 50.8 percent or 19.1 million.
The figure represents an increase of 2.68 million voters from the last presidential election in 2002.
People in their 20s account for 19.4 percent of the total electorate; voters in their 30s, 22.9 percent; and voters in their 40s, 22.5 percent, according to the ministry.
Those in their 50s and 60s constitute 33.5 percent of eligible voters.
By region, voters in Seoul and the surrounding Incheon and Gyeonggi Province numbered 18.3 million, or 48.5 percent of the total.
The number of 19-year-old voters reaches 619,619 or 1.6 percent of the total, it said.
Young voters aged 19 are entitled to vote for president for the first time under the revised Election Law.