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ELECTION Nationwide voting starts, winner expected around midnight
A voter casts a ballot at a polling station in Suseong District, Daegu, Tuesday. Yonhap
By Park Ung
Voting for the presidential election began at 6 a.m. Tuesday at 14,295 polling stations nationwide.
The election comes 60 days after the Constitutional Court removed former President Yoon Suk Yeol from office in April over his declaration of martial law late last year. By law, a presidential election must be held within 60 days of an impeachment ruling.
The winner of this election will assume office immediately Wednesday — bypassing the customary 60-day transition period — with a presidential term set to continue until June 2030.
Voting will continue until 8 p.m. Once the polls close, ballot boxes at each station will be sealed with tamper-proof stickers and their slots locked to prevent the insertion of additional ballots. Election officials will then transport the boxes to counting centers under police escort, accompanied by election observers.
About 30 minutes after the polls close, roughly 70,000 election workers will begin counting ballots at 254 stations across the country.
A clear idea of the winning candidate is expected to emerge once more than 70 percent of the ballots have been counted — likely around midnight.
However, the timing of the projected winner’s announcement may vary depending on factors such as voter turnout, the speed of vote counting at polling stations and how close the race is between the candidates.
In the 2022 presidential election, which remained neck and neck until the end, Yoon's projected victory was announced around 2 a.m. the following day.
According to the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, the number of eligible voters for the election stands at approximately 44.39 million.
According to several opinion polls released Wednesday — the last day poll results were allowed to be published before the election — the liberal Democratic Party of Korea candidate Lee Jae-myung was polling between 45 and 49 percent, while conservative People Power Party candidate Kim Moon-soo trailed at around 36 percent. Lee Jun-seok of the minor conservative Reform Party stood at 9 to 10 percent, and Kwon Young-gook of the progressive Korean Democratic Labor Party was polling between 0.7 and 1 percent.
Early voting, held Thursday and Friday, registered the second highest turnout on record at 34.74 percent, with approximately 15.42 million voters casting ballots.
In the previous presidential election triggered by impeachment — the 2017 vote held after the removal of Park Geun-hye — the early voting rate stood at 26.06 percent, with a final turnout of 77.2 percent. In the 2022 presidential election, early voting reached a record high of 36.93 percent, but the overall turnout was similar at 77.1 percent.