By Brenda Goh and Hyunjoo Jin<\/p>\n
SEOUL, June 7 (Reuters) – South Korean President Lee Jae Myung called on Sunday for a thorough investigation \u200cinto a ballot shortage that disrupted recent local elections, saying prosecutors \u200cand police would be involved.<\/p>\n
“As one citizen and as the president responsible for the government, I \u200bexpress deep regret,” Lee said in an X post.<\/p>\n
Last week’s local elections were hit by a ballot shortage that prevented some eligible voters from casting ballots. The head of the National Election Commission (NEC), the independent body that oversaw the \u200cvote, resigned after the incident.<\/p>\n
Thousands \u2060have since protested outside a ballot-counting site in Seoul, demanding a re-run.<\/p>\n
OPPOSITION CALLS FOR JOINT AUDIT<\/p>\n
Lee said the incident was “difficult \u2060to comprehend” and that the NEC’s response and explanations were insufficient. He said he had asked parliament to conduct a fact-finding probe, establish measures to prevent \u200ba repeat \u200band discuss reform plans for the commission.<\/p>\n
Jang \u200bDong-hyeok, leader of the opposition \u200cconservative People Power Party, told a press conference on Sunday that he had visited the protests and called for a joint audit with Lee’s Democratic Party.<\/p>\n
He said ballot shortages were especially severe in areas that lean conservative, but stopped short of calling for a re-run, saying he would “obey whatever the people’s \u200ccommands say”.<\/p>\n
The Democratic Party swept major local \u200braces, but the opposition retained Seoul’s mayoralty, with \u200bincumbent Oh Se-hoon winning another \u200bterm.<\/p>\n
The NEC said 50 of 14,300 polling stations ran out \u200cof ballots, while voting was temporarily \u200bsuspended at 22 \u200bdue to delays in supplies. In Seoul, delays were reported at 12 locations in Songpa district, a conservative stronghold.<\/p>\n
At one Songpa polling station, an \u200bangry crowd blocked officials \u200cfrom moving ballot boxes to be counted after voting ended.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by \u200bBrenda Goh and Hyunjoo Jin. Additional reporting by Joyce Lee. Editing \u200bby Kim Coghill and Mark Potter)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Brenda Goh and Hyunjoo Jin SEOUL, June 7 (Reuters) – South Korean President Lee Jae Myung called…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44459,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[25294,24687,31,146,6460,6420,33,9459,26539],"class_list":["post-44458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-south-korea","tag-ballot-boxes","tag-joyce-lee","tag-korea","tag-lee-jae-myung","tag-local-elections","tag-national-election-commission","tag-south-korea","tag-south-korean-president","tag-thorough-investigation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}