Voting halted at 14+ Seoul polling stations · National Election Commission admits printing ballots for only 50% of voters · public apology at 9 p.m. · criminal complaint filed · opposition demands a re-vote
In the afternoon of June 3, polling stations in Seoul's Jamsil area (Songpa district) began running out of ballots. As of 6:20 p.m., 14 polling stations in Seoul had run short — 12 in Songpa, 1 in Gangnam, 1 in Gwangjin. Several Songpa stations had to be resupplied and kept voting open until 10 p.m. The disruption spread to the greater Seoul area: a station in Songdo, Yeonsu-gu (Incheon) briefly suspended voting around 5 p.m. for lack of ballots. Voters who came to cast a single ballot had to queue for a long time or turn back.
The NEC acknowledged that for Songpa it had printed ballots equal to only 50% of registered voters. An official explained that "for local elections we print ballots at roughly 50% of voters based on past turnout," and that "turnout was higher than in previous local elections, which caused the problem." The commission said such a ballot shortage was unprecedented in Korean local elections.
The warning signs were there. Advance-voting turnout this cycle was a record-high 23.51% (over 10.49 million voters), and hourly election-day turnout ran consistently above the previous local election. Final turnout reached 61.0% — more than 10 points above the 50.9% of the 2022 local elections. A "print only half" rule could not absorb that surge.
NEC Secretary-General Heo Cheol-hoon issued a statement at 9 p.m. from the commission's Gwacheon headquarters.
The commission said it would "identify the exact cause of the ballot shortage immediately after counting ends."
A civic group filed a criminal complaint with the Seoul Metropolitan Police against the NEC chair, secretary-general and Seoul/Songpa election officials, alleging abuse of authority and dereliction of duty: "the ballot shortage stripped voters of their right to vote," it argued, charging that officials "grossly neglected their supervisory duties."
The politics ran hot. People Power Party (opposition) leader Jang Dong-hyeok told reporters that "the Seoul election has been tainted," demanding the Seoul vote be declared void and re-run, and that an election-nullification suit be considered (party position). Some pointed to Germany's 2021 Berlin election, which the Constitutional Court ordered fully repeated over ballot chaos. Korean media called it "another unprecedented fiasco after the 2022 'basket ballot' incident" and "worse than a elementary-school class election."
At Jamsil polling station No. 2 in Songpa — the epicenter of the shortage — two ballot boxes (~2,000 votes) could not be moved to the counting center, triggering a three-day standoff. From around 10 p.m. on June 3, conservative-leaning YouTubers and citizens blockaded the station to stop the boxes being removed, citing fraud fears and demanding the ballots be "preserved." The blockade lasted about 35 hours.
Korean media reported minor scuffles but no major clash during the forced dispersal. The NEC said that once these boxes are counted, the election of Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon and others becomes legally finalized.
Right after the ballot boxes were forcibly removed, protesters moved to the Olympic Park handball arena (the counting center) in Songpa — where the boxes had been taken — and surrounded it chanting "re-vote," "void the election," "election fraud." A crowd that police unofficially put at 6,000–7,000 on the evening of June 5 swelled over the weekend to a police-unofficial estimate of 20,000–30,000. Korean media reported that no single organization led the gathering, and that a large share of participants were in their teens to thirties.
The dispute over scale also grew. The NEC's first internal investigation found the ballot shortage had occurred not at the 14 stations first reported but at 50 polling stations nationwide, and the commission set up a fact-finding committee. The opposition (People Power Party) presses for the Seoul mayoral election to be voided and re-run; the government and the NEC maintain the count and the confirmed results are lawful. Whether the election is voided or re-run is now a matter for the courts and the Constitutional Court (see ⑧).
※ Anonymous citizen-opinion poll with no legal effect. Annulment / re-vote is a question for the courts and the Constitutional Court.
This goes beyond a clerical error: it exposes a structural gap in Korea's Public Official Election Act (POEA). While some stations kept voting late into the night, exit polls were published and counting began at 6 p.m. — and the statutes, read side by side, collide.
"Polling stations open at 6 a.m. and close at 6 p.m. … Provided that voters waiting at the station to vote at closing time shall be given a number tag and allowed to vote, after which the station closes."
→ Voters in Songpa who couldn't cast a ballot by 6 p.m. because there were none, and who were queuing, lawfully voted after 6 p.m. under this proviso (until 10 p.m.). In other words, the actual closing time of those stations was not 6 p.m.
"…no one may ask about, or demand disclosure of, a voter's choice until the close of voting. Provided, broadcasters and daily newspapers may, to forecast results, ask voters at least 50 metres from the station in a manner that does not breach secrecy — but may not publish the substance or results until the close of voting."
→ Exit-poll results may not be published "until the close of voting." But if some stations were still voting until 10 p.m. under the Art. 155 proviso, their close of voting was not 6 p.m. Nationwide exit polls were nonetheless published at 6 p.m. and counting began — meaning voters who had not yet cast a ballot were exposed to projections and the count.
"…where there is a violation of election regulations and it is found to have affected the result of the election, the court shall rule the election, in whole or in part, invalid…"
→ If the disenfranchisement from the ballot shortage, and the procedural defect of publishing exit polls and counting while voting continued, are found to have "affected the result," that could be grounds for annulment. But the bar for proving "affected the result" is very high, and any annulment is for the Supreme Court / Constitutional Court to decide.
📚 Read the statutes — Public Official Election Act (English, KLRI) ↗
Ballot shortages, long lines and voting past closing are not unique to Korea — and how other democracies dealt with them gives a clear benchmark.
Berlin's September 2021 elections saw ballot shortages, queues of over an hour, and voting that continued past the 6 p.m. close. The result?
· The Berlin Constitutional Court (Nov 2022) declared the state election entirely invalid → a full re-run in February 2023.
· The Federal Constitutional Court (Dec 19, 2023, 2 BvC 4/23) ordered a re-run in 455 constituencies of the federal vote, finding that "waiting times of one hour or more indicate electoral errors," and violations of the 6 p.m. rule and of the Basic Law's Art. 38 election principles.
· Key doctrine: annulment was possible without proving individual ballots were flipped — a "possibility of affecting the result" plus "systemic defects" sufficed.
In the 2010 general election, about 1,200 voters at 27 stations were turned away while queuing at the 10 p.m. close. The UK amended its law in 2013 (Electoral Registration and Administration Act, s.19) to provide that voters in the queue at closing time are issued ballots and allowed to vote — "if you're in line, you vote" is the global standard.
In the US, courts may extend voting hours, but ballots cast in the extended window are kept as segregated provisional ballots and adjudicated afterward (federal Help America Vote Act of 2002). It's a worked-out answer to the very question Korea now faces: how to handle the extended-voting ballots.
Korea's Constitution guarantees the right to vote (Art. 24) and enshrines universal, equal, direct and secret suffrage (Arts. 41 & 67). To these the courts add a free election principle — voters forming their will without outside interference — though it is not spelled out in text.
→ Being denied the chance to vote at all, because of a ballot shortage, strikes at universal suffrage and the essence of the right to vote. The Constitutional Court has held that "a restriction on the right to vote is justified only when there is a clear, individual and specific reason that makes it unavoidable, and cannot rest on vague, abstract risk" (2004Hun-Ma644, ruling the prior denial of overseas citizens' suffrage unconstitutional). An NEC-caused ballot shortage offers no such justification. And exposing not-yet-voted citizens to exit polls and the count unsettles the independent decision-making that secret and free elections presuppose.
Bottom line: the bar is very high. Art. 224 requires both ① a regulatory violation and ② proof that the violation affected the outcome. Of the fraud-claim suits over the 2020 general election, all 126 were dismissed (zero upheld); even a manual recount (Min Kyung-wook, 2020Su30) found nothing and was dismissed. Courts have dismissed cases even after acknowledging procedural defects, on the ground that "the result was not affected" (22nd election, 2024Su14).
But the claim that "no Korean election has ever been annulled" is false. In 1960, the Supreme Court recognized grounds for a partial re-vote where islanders could not vote due to a storm and the number of non-voters exceeded the margin between the winner and runner-up. → That is exactly the live question now: "Is the number of voters who gave up because there were no ballots greater than the winning margin in a given district?" If so, that district could become the subject of a partial-invalidity / re-vote dispute (a nationwide re-run is not automatic). The final call rests with the Supreme Court and Constitutional Court.