now polls closed over four hours ago and busy at work
now are those counting ballots at this hour our very own omg young is at a vote counting station
in seoul now how far along are we with the ballot county i mean did you see
valor boxes pouring in from nearby polling stations earlier this evening
i'm here at toro national university gymnasium which which the ballots are being counted behind
me are some 470 staff and volunteers who are busy counting the ballots and they're
they'll be working late into the night this is what you will see at most of the county
stations across south korea when the voting boxes arrived they're opened and ballots are poured
onto the table then staff organized ballots and put them through the counting machines
and that helped classify the ballots by candidate and party where they are
identified as valid or invalid then staff check the ballots that are identified as invalid the
valley counting area behind me is under strict control all staff are wearing protective masks
against covet 19 and only both county staff can enter the work area policemen nationwide are on
full standby at county stations to ensure safe and accurate proceedings in fact the
police deployed nearly 70 thousand personnel to provide security for any possible situation
on election day the police also delivered the ballot boxes to the accounting stations
in their constituency in total there are 251 centers nationwide counting the ballots tonight
the national election commission says it'll do its utmost to manage the election throughout
the national election commission has been devoted in its preparations for the election
so that voters can exercise their right of suffrage without any difficulties
we will do our best until the polling and counting ends
well we're going to have to rely even more on ballots counted this presidential election as
exit polls failed to give a clear picture of the outcome now when can we expect a more
clear-cut result or at least a good idea of which one of the two may be the winner
kanye hopefully by one or two am we should be able to have a better idea ruling democratic
party candidate myeong and main opposition people power party candidate young hunger have been neck
and neck throughout but in a couple of hours we should be able to have a pretty good idea of who
the next president of south korea will be ballot numbers from this location are coming in as are
those from the rest of the country we're still a couple of hours away from seeing all the ballots
tallied up but as of 11 20 p.m roughly 20 percent of the votes have been counted south korea could
be making up to the results at about 6 a.m on thursday when the ballot counting comes to the end
but the national election commission is providing live updates online in the previous presidential
election it took nearly six hours until the ballot count was completed but it could take longer this
time that's because early voting in this year's election had the highest ever voter turnout at
roughly 37 for the early voting ballots they're in envelopes which need to be opened before they can
be counted so it could take longer to count the votes also the ballots passed by coven 19 patients
and those in quarantine are counted separately so a little bit of patience is required as we go into
tonight waiting for those official results this is all i have for now but i'll bring more updates in
our later newscast back to you all right you're seeing a south korean democracy in the works uh
excruciationary very very slow and manually being done all right thank you gm for that