Now, let's go to the National Election Commission, which keeps track of the voter turnout.
Our Yoo Li-an is there. Li-an, do we have the final numbers yet?
Chery, Sean,... the election committee has confirmed that the final voter turnout is
56-point-8 percent. This is the highest turnout in 16 years.
It's also about two percentage points higher than the 54-point-5 percent recorded at the
last local election in 2010,.. making it the second highest voter turnout in all the five
past local elections. But still, it falls short of the 60-percent
expected by the election committee,... since a large group took part in the two-day early
voting period late last week. About 11-point-5 percent of all eligible voters
cast early ballots. Also, some pundits had predicted the Sewol-ho
ferry disaster would pull up voter participation,... but given the lower than expected voter turnout,..
it seems the disaster has only worked to turn the heads of voters away from politics.
The National Election Commission expects that we will have a pretty good sense of who has
won by 11 p.m. tonight, Korea time, but as there are many races that are neck-and-neck
this year,.. they expect the final results to come in at three to four hours past midnight.
Now the NEC has made extra efforts to increase election transparency,... and allowed anyone
interested in seeing the ballot count process to watch it live, on its homepage and major
portal sites including Naver and Youtube. I'm Yoo Li-an reporting live from the National
Election Commission.