Early voting for the 2018 local elections here in Korea officially kicked off this morning, five days prior to the actual June 13th Election Day.
Citizens who won't be able to cast their votes on Election Day can visit any of the more than three-thousand polling stations around the nation today or tomorrow and vote for their new representatives.
We now connect to our Kim Mok-yeon... who's standing by at a polling station set up in Seoul Station.
Mok-yeon, are you seeing many voters file through over there?

Hi Ji-yoon, yeah, as you can see,... there are lots of citizens waiting in line to exercise their democratic right to vote... and it's been quite busy from when early voting opened at 6 a.m., Korea time.
It's now a little past 12 p.m. in Korea, and as of now, more than (_____,000) citizens out of some 42 million eligible voters have voted already, amounting to ____ percent.


The National Election Commission says there are 3,512 such polling locations nationwide, and citizens who won't be able to cast their vote on Election Day can visit any of these stations today or tomorrow from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., to vote.
For this year, citizens can cast up to seven votes to select some 4,000 candidates for administrative, legislative and educational posts, including 17 metropolitan mayors and provincial governors.
Some living in selected districts can also vote for lawmakers as the by-elections to fill twelve vacant seats in the National Assembly are also underway.

Mok-yeon, we've been seeing a lot of campaigns encouraging citizens to vote early, I heard that our very own President himself also voted this morning?

Yes Ji-yoon at around 9 a.m., President Moon Jae-in and his wife First Lady Kim Jung-sook cast their ballots. Moon is the first sitting President to vote early since the system was introduced in 2013.

The top office says President Moon's decision was aimed at boosting the nation's voter turnout.
Candidates and politicians from all the parties have been encouraging citizens to cast their votes early because of the influence it has on the overall turnout rate, and because of concerns turnout could be low... as there's so much attention on the North Korea-U.S. summit that will be held on June 12th, the day before Election Day.
As part of such efforts, lawmakers from the Democratic Party of Korea promised that five of their members will dye their hair blue if early voter turnout surpasses 20 percent, while Liberty Korea Party chief Hong Joon-pyo said he will dance to the party's campaign song if the turnout is higher than 30 percent.

Back to you Ji-yoon.