Ballot paper shortage hurts South Korea's reputation as model democracy: President Lee

SEOUL: South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said on Monday (Jun 8) that ballot paper shortages in last week's local elections dealt a serious blow to the country's reputation as a model democracy, and he welcomed the protests questioning the fairness of the process.

"It was just ridiculous," Lee said at a news conference when asked about the Jun 3 incident that kept some voters waiting for hours at polling stations for ballot papers to be delivered.

"It was probably something that's hard for even people in a lesser developed democracy to imagine that people couldn't vote because they didn't have ballot papers," Lee said. "Shocking."

Thousands of people, many of them in their 20s and 30s, have protested outside a ballot counting station in Seoul, demanding a new election.

The head of the National Election Commission (NEC), an independent body that oversees all elections in the country, has resigned to take responsibility.

The commission has said it printed ballot papers for 73 per cent of the total eligible voters - calculated based on previous turnout rates - and polling stations in some districts were slow to receive additional ballot papers after they started to run out.

Lee has ordered a thorough investigation into the ballot paper shortage, and the ruling Democratic Party said it plans to launch a national inquiry.

The constitutional guarantee of independence given to the NEC has led to a complacency that exposed a fundamental problem in how the election process is managed, Lee said.

The incident did not point to the possibility of election fraud as some critics have claimed, Lee said, but there may be some people who are criminally responsible.

Lee's liberal Democratic Party posted a strong showing in the elections to pick provincial governors, mayors and local assembly members, while the opposition conservatives retained Seoul's mayoralty.