The South Korean Supreme Court announced on June 30 that it has finished the verification of Incheon Yeonsu-gu’s results from the 2020 general election and concluded that there was no fraud. However, it did find that a historically large number of votes were incorrectly given to the ruling party’s candidate, raising suspicions.
The plaintiff was former lawmaker Min Kyung-wook, who lost the Incheon Yeonsu-gu 2nd district election as a candidate from the main opposition party and filed election invalidation lawsuits with the court. The Supreme Court said that it manually verified all 127,166 ballot papers from June 28 to June 29 for approximately 22 hours and concluded that candidate Chung Il-young from the ruling Democratic Party received 52,678 votes and Min received 50,064 votes. The Supreme Court justices and legal representatives for both the plaintiff and the defendant, the National Election Commission (NEC), participated in the process.
“After analyzing QR codes printed on early voting ballot papers from Yeonsu-gu 2nd district’s election commission by using a program suggested by the plaintiff, it was verified that there were no early voting ballot papers that had different serial numbers from those provided by the NEC and there was no existence of ballot papers with duplicate numbers,” said the Supreme Court in a press release.
The Supreme Court created image files of all 127,166 votes, including 45,593 early voting ballot papers. With the request from Min and his defense team, the court converted QR codes printed on early voting ballot papers to a normal serial number format. The QR codes used in the election contained a 31-digit number. The number contained various information, including the name of the election district and the election commission in the jurisdiction. Some people who believe that election fraud occurred argued that the QR code contained the personal information of voters and that it could be used to identify each voter, thus making them more vulnerable to manipulation. Min has long argued that “ghost votes were mixed with actual votes” and “hackers from the Chinese Communist Party were involved.”
Reportedly, it was the first time that the court verified election results by checking QR codes due to the plaintiff linking the possibility of election fraud to the codes. Thus, the court compared the QR codes on the ballot papers and the QR code information stored by the National Election Commission. It said, “We also analyzed the integrated voter list at the request of the plaintiff.”
Initially, Min lost by 2,893 votes, but the figure was changed to 2,614 votes due to errors found during the post-election verification process. The total number of votes for the DP candidate Chung dropped by 128 from 52,806 to 52,678, and the figure for Min rose by 151 from 49,913 to 50,064. The number of votes received by two other candidates from third parties also fell, making Min the only candidate who actually received more votes from the post-election verification process than he did during the initial counting process.
The reason why there was such a big change in figures was due to the categorization process of valid and invalid ballot papers based on stamps made by election management officials. In other words, some invalid votes from the initial counting process were changed to valid votes during the verification process, and vice versa. It was reported that the change in the number of votes each candidate received after the verification or recounting was the biggest in history.
Min and his defense team are still reportedly questioning the validity of the verification process. Some people are arguing online that some of the ballot papers used during the verification process looked like brand-new papers that no one had ever touched.
“Evidence was found that ballot papers used in the verification process were printed from some print shop’s printing machine even though regular early voting ballot papers are printed one page at a time by a [simple] printer,” Min was quoted by media reports. “There were so many ballot papers attached to each other and some ballot papers with torn off portions of paper attached to them. All these kinds of phenomena should be disclosed to the public.”
The Supreme Court is expected to deliver its verdict based on the results from the verification process after holding another round of pleadings. Some reports have speculated that the court could initiate a further investigation if they find it to be necessary and that it could disclose the verification results to the public.
Meanwhile, the Seoul High Court reduced the sentencing of a man in his 60s who removed ballot papers from an election management facility and provided them to Min Kyung-wook, the former lawmaker who demanded the investigation. The appeals court ruled on June 30 that it will reduce the sentencing of the man who worked as an election observer during the 2020 general election from two and a half years to one and a half years. He removed 6 ballot papers stored at a gym managed by the Guri election commission. He raised the issue that the color of the ballot papers was different. Min held a press briefing soon after the election and posed with these ballot papers, saying they are evidence of election fraud.
The defendant, who was charged with violating the Public Official Election Act, argued that he was a whistleblower who tried to help the public, but the court dismissed the argument.
“It is true that he started the fake news, but it is not right to hold him accountable for all the division in the public and the society,” the court ruled. “He was not able to receive a clear explanation from the NEC on the issue of difference in colors. Early voting ballot papers’ color may look different based on the printer’s condition and ink concentration, and it does not appear that him questioning the issue was groundless, since he was not aware of this fact.”
The lower court argued that the man not only stole six ballot papers but also undermined trust in election integrity and democracy itself. The prosecution and the defendant both appealed to the court.
