“Tinkle ”, On the Eve of Election

“Mother, you should vote for candidate ○○!”

“Children, if you don’t want to see your father faint and fall, vote for candidate △△!”

When representatives of KM21, Jung Mong-jun withdrew support for the candidate of MDP, Roh Moo-hyun on 18th 11:00P.M, telephone traffic increased 35% than usual for three hours after the announcement.

According to KT on 19th, out-of-city calls from Wednesday evening 11:00~Thursday 02:00A.M last week were 4,215,000 calls. However, telephone traffic at the same time on 18th~19th totaled 5,709,000 calls which was an increase of 1,499,000 calls.

It is reported according to the time as △2,810,000 calls from 11p.m~midnight (an increase of 26.1% compared to last week) △ 1,797,000 calls from midnight~01.00a.m (43.2%) △ 1,102,000 calls from 01:00a.m~02:00a.m (50.8%).

KT stated, “It seems that people might have called up relatives to tell whom to vote for, as speech of the representative Jung raised election fever.”

KT said, “as volume of Seoul local calls was huge, statistics couldn’t be concluded, however, it is estimated that it increased as much as out-of-city calls ”

On the other hand, telephone traffic of mobile had no big change. SK telecom explained, “at that time, 1% of calls saw an increase, but this was ‘effect of weekend’ that is similar to the Friday night ~ Saturday dawn.”

Seong-Yub Ra cpu@donga.com