Election day voting draws long lines

Long lines formed at polling stations across the country as voting for South Korea's June 3 local elections got underway at 6 a.m. Wednesday. At a polling station at Seocho High School in Seoul's Seocho District, 15 voters were already waiting before the doors opened. Kim Jun-hee, a 19-year-old university student casting his first ballot, said he had come wearing his department jacket because he was excited about the milestone. "I read the campaign pledges of nearly every candidate before voting," he said.

In Gwangju's Dong District, Kim Jeong-ja, 111, arrived at a polling station with her daughter. Born in 1915, she has lived through Japanese colonial rule, the Korean War and South Korea's democratization movement. Kim, who said she has never missed an election since the country's founding, added, "I always pray for the nation to do well." In Seoul's Daerim 2-dong neighborhood, Park Geum-cheol, 61, and Hwang Geum-hwa, 62, a naturalized South Korean couple originally from Yanbian, China, said they were voting for the second time following their participation in last year's presidential election. "We exercised our right to vote with a sense of patriotism and responsibility," they said.

Voters also found creative ways to mark the occasion. Song Su-min, a 22-year-old university student, posted a photo of the official voting stamp on the back of her hand to the social media platform Setlog. Kim, a 30-year-old nurse identified only by her surname, brought a voting card printed with her favorite character and stamped it at the polling station.

By 3 p.m., police had received 312 emergency calls related to the election, including reports of disturbances and attempts to interfere with voting. In Dajeong-dong, Sejong City, a man in his 40s tried to show his completed ballot to an election official instead of placing it in the ballot box at around 7 a.m. After being stopped, he caused a disturbance for about 30 minutes, reportedly saying, "Didn't the president do the same thing?" before being removed by police. At around 11:40 a.m., a drunken man in his 60s created a commotion at a polling station in Gimhae, South Gyeongsang Province, declaring that he, too, would reveal his ballot. He was later escorted home.

A number of voting-related mix-ups were also reported. At around 1 p.m., a man in his 50s at a polling station in Eomgung-dong, Busan, contacted police after discovering that a signature had already been entered next to his name in the voter registry, preventing him from casting a ballot. Police later determined that another voter with the same name had signed the register by mistake. In Ok-dong, Ulsan, an election worker mistakenly issued two identical ballots to a voter before recovering the extra one. In Daeryun-dong, Seogwipo, on Jeju Island, a man in his 60s lodged a complaint after finding a ballot apparently left behind in a voting booth by another voter.


김다인 기자 daout@donga.com