Watch World Cup Games after the Vote

The June 13 local elections are being overshadowed by the World Cup soccer games. Worried about a low turnout ratio, local governments, civic groups, candidates as well as the Election Management Commission are struggling to increase the turnout ratio. The Central Election Management Commission is now staging an awareness campaign, “Vote First and Watch World Cup Games”, through advertisement in media, and publicity activities by celebrities and on the internet homepage of the Red Devil to attract voters to the booths. Even employees of the Central Election Management Commission are urging people to go to the polls on TV programs or in readers’ columns of newspapers. The Election Management Commission is now airing publicity advertisement to send voters to the booths by featuring famous celebrities such as Nara Jang, Sujong Choi, and Baby Vox, the popular vocal dancing group. In addition, the Election Management Commission is posting a message, saying “watch soccer games after the vote” on the internet homepages of the Red Devil and KTF cheering party. Chairman of the Election Management Commission, Jidam Yoo, is planning to issue an official statement a day before the election day to urge people to go to vote and he is also going to send messages to voters by mobile phones. Induk Suh in the Public Information Office of the Election Management Commission said, “With all this fever over the world cup games, the turnout ratio is expected to be unprecedentedly low, so we will do our best to increase the turnout ratio until the election day.” Civic groups and local governments joined the campaign to increase the turnout ratio.

‘The Commission of Seoul YMCA 100,000 Voters’ staged the campaign on June, 11th to let people know about the “7 principles of voters”, whose message is “If you do not vote, unwanted candidates will be elected only to distort the politics”, in subway stations and department stores located in Jong-ro, Dong-dae-moon, Young-dung-po, Gang-nam areas in Seoul. ‘Voters’ Campaign for Fair Election’, which is composed of 39 civic groups including ‘Association for Economic Justice’, urged citizens to vote in the square in front of Seoul Station on June, 11th, with the presence of minister of Government Administration and Home Affairs, Geun-sik Lee. Along with all these efforts, ‘Voters’ Campaign for Fair Election is planning the “E-mail Relay Campaign”, through which it sends e-mails to members of civic groups and citizens and make them to send again the e-mail to other people. Candidates are also making efforts to increase turnout ratio. A election worker of the southern area in Inchon said, “ We discussed many times to find out the way to increase the turnout ratio, but we could not find a good solution. So we secured tens of cars to carry voters who are favor of our candidate even though we know it’s illegal.”

Another election worker of Gang-dong district in Seoul said, “ How hard we may try to tell people to go to vote , it seems that the election will end up as an event only for our election workers”.

Min-Hyuk Park mhpark@donga.com