Much ado about nothing

In the 2002 presidential election, the main opposition Grand National Party`s candidate Lee Hoi-chang lost to the ruling Democratic Party`s Roh Moo-hyun by a margin of 2.3 percentage points, or 570,000 votes. Supporters of Lee`s party, which is now the ruling Saenuri Party, could not accept the loss by such a thin margin. Rumors quickly spread that the election watchdog under the Kim Dae-jung administration could have rigged votes by manipulating ballot sorting machines. The Grand National Party filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court claiming vote rigging and errors in vote counting and demanding a recount. When a recount in January 2003 showed that merely negligible errors occurred, the party had to make a public apology.

Since the end of last week`s presidential election, nearly 180,000 online petitions have been made demanding a manual recount of the votes. Rumors say the high voter turnout of 75.8 percent was expected to benefit Moon Jae-in of the main opposition Democratic United Party, and that he had no reason to lose to the ruling party`s runner Park Geun-hye. Like 10 years ago, the election watchdog under the Lee Myung-bak administration has become a target. Park Jie-won, former floor leader of the main opposition party, said such a large number of online petitions cannot be ignored and pledged to seek a parliamentary fact-finding probe into the allegation. He suggested turning the online demand for a recount into a public issue.

In this year`s vote count, ballot sorting machines that had been introduced in the June 2002 local elections were used. The number of machines used to count votes has risen from 960 in 2002 to 1,377 in 2007 to 1,742 this year. Observers from both the ruling and opposition parties closely monitored the operation and use of the devices. On average, one observer from the ruling party and another from the opposition served as monitors. Considering that last week`s presidential election was a very tight race, many complaints were expected. The general consensus, however, is that the vote counting process had no major incidents. How frustrating to see people who simply cannot accept the election result, which Moon Jae-in himself respected.

Chung Bong-ju, a former lawmaker of the Democratic United Party who co-hosted the popular political podcast "Nakkomsu," said in a recent interview that the podcast had "passed its expiration date." Though the talk show raised groundless suspicions over President-elect Park, they backfired. The main opposition party needs self-reflection to find the reason for its election defeat and stop blaming others. There are hundreds of well-known reasons for the liberal camp`s defeat, including an internal power struggle in the party and a flawed campaign strategy. Park Jie-won, who was once floor leader of a major party, should know better than to instigate the public with an unfounded rumor.

Editorial Writer Jeong Yeon-wook (jyw11@donga.com)