Vote counting underway in South Korea's 21st general election

Arirang News 2020-04-15

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마스크•장갑 중무장…제21대 국회의원선거 개표 시작

About three hours into vote counting for South Korea's 21st general election.
To fill us in on the process, our Kim Dami joins us from the Olympic Gymnastics Arena, one of the vote counting facilities here in Seoul.
Dami, please fill us in.
Good evening, Daniel.
As you can see right behind me, around 8-hundred people are diligently counting the votes. In the last general election in 2016, it took around 8 hours to get the final results, but this year it's going to take longer.
Here's what we have so far...
As for the ballot count across the nation, as of 9 PM, it stood at one percent.
Breaking it down by the major regions of South Korea...
In Seoul, we stand at point-two percent.
In Gyeonggi-do one percent.
In Busan point-seven percent.
and Daegu at one-point-five percent.
Hopefully, we should be able to see some results taking shape by around 2 AM.
In fact, the National Election Commission predicts that for single member districts, vote counting will end... at around 4 AM.
But for the proportional representation seats, counting will go on until 8 AM, and the final results will be announced on Thursday afternoon.
This is because while the district ballots are counted by machine, the PR ballots this year are too long for the machines, so they have to be counted by hand.
They're so long because this year there are 35 parties, which is a record number.
Across the country there are around 64-thousand vote counters, an increase of 35 percent from the last election.
On top of the need for manual vote counting, things are different this time because of the COVID-19 crisis.
ALL the vote counters are wearing masks and gloves while keeping an appropriate distance from one another.
The top priorities this election are sanition and safety, so the polling stations are ventilated on a regular basis. And any volunteer who feels unwell will leave the facility immediately.
For real-time updates, the National Election Commission is also providing the count online.
That's all I have for now, but I'll bring you more updates in our later newscast. Daniel.

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