Executive summary
Four months have passed since South Korea held its controversial election on April 15, 2020, which resulted in a lopsided victory for the ruling Minjoo (Democratic) Party. The Minjoo Party now commands 180 seats in the National Assembly out of 300 total.
The controversy about the electoral process arose immediately, and there are more than 40 allegations of vote manipulation on the books, as of today. Civic groups and election observers have brought legal actions against the NEC (National Election Commission) demanding a recount of votes, preservation of ballots and election machines in districts, and a host of other irregularities.
Nothing has happened to resolve these accusations, which now number about 130 cases.
Together, South Korean civic groups and election observers have compiled a 200-page report to highlight some of the anomalies and fraudulent practices to bring attention to the electoral corruption to fix the broken system.
South Korean civic leaders and overseas Korean community (numbering about 7 million) are urging the Moon Jae-in government to investigate and correct the electoral system to advance the Korean democracy and to enhance the Korean image worldwide.
The following disclosure is a summary of the report.
International Scandal Regarding South Korean Election System
In 2017, the collusion among the National Election Commission (NEC), Association of World Election Bodies (A-WEB), and Miru Systems caused an international uproar because they conspired to sell Korean-made election equipment to countries like the Congo and Iraq, which resulted in election fraud scandals.
To further explain the relationship between the NEC and the A-WEB, the NEC initiated and founded A-WEB in 2013 with the National Assembly’s funding. The NEC established an ODA (Overseas Development) fund of about $6 million in 2016 to promote the “Korean Election System.” In 2017, the NEC received nearly $8 million for marketing the system in countries like the Congo, Uzbekistan, Fiji, El Salvador, and Ecuador.
The A-WEB operates with the NEC’s support and serves as a global seller of electronic voting and ballot-counting machines by South Korean companies designated by the NEC. The electronic voting and ballot-counting machines of Miru Systems, a South Korean company, were used for election fraud in the Congo and Iraq.[1]
The members of the South Korean National Assembly demanded a full accounting of the funds allotted to A-WEB. At a hearing held in October 2018, Mr. Chu Seung-yong, deputy Chairman of the National Assembly, charged, “Korea has become a laughing stock in the international community for exporting election fraud. The NEC must take responsibility for the A-WEB’s corrupt practice.”
Westminster Foundation for Democracy (U.K.) Reviews Electronic Voting Machine
In August 2018, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD), run by the British government, reviewed the South Korean-made Miru System’s electronic voting machines prior to the December 2018 presidential election in the Congo and concluded that they were exposed to very high manipulation risks and made 15 recommendations to improve the electronic voting machines before the presidential election.
The same problems were found in the Hantle System’s electronic ballot-counting machines in South Korea’s April 15 general elections in 2020. That means the NEC had not addressed the problems WFD had found in 2018.
Cyber Security
The concern for cybersecurity in the electoral process is universal. According to an article posted by NBC News, “Virtually no laws govern the cybersecurity aspects of voting machine technologies” in the U.S. [2]
Eddie Perez, global director of technology development for the Open Source Election Technology Institute, says that the lack of oversight is problematic. “The way people vote is managed by a couple of entities that people don’t know a lot about, and that creates risks for the country,” he said.
In the U.S., politicians are concerned about the soundness of voting systems. In a document signed by Senators and House Representatives, the U.S. Congress wrote, “We are particularly concerned that secretive and “trouble-plagued companies” owned by private equity firms and responsible for manufacturing and maintaining voting machines and other election administration equipment, “have long skimped on security in favor of convenience,” leaving voting systems across the country “prone to security problems.” They were concerned that three large vendors, Election Systems & Software, Dominion Voting Systems, and Hart InterCivic, facilitated 90% of the country’s eligible voters.[3]
In South Korea, the situation is worse. Hantle Systems monopolized the supply of voting machines in the 2020 election.
Relationship between Hantle System & Chungho Comnet Co., Ltd
Hantle and Chungho Comnet are known to be close partners. They have maintained a special business relationship, sharing a significant stake in a South Korean company, Jway.
What is alarming, Chungho Comnet signed an MOU with China’s Huawei in 2015 to handle all of Huawei’s products, including telecommunication equipment and smartphones. Considering the special relationship between Chungho Comnet and Hantle, China’s Huawei is likely to have been involved in Hantle System’s electronic counting machines’ software and hardware, raising the specter of election manipulation alluded to in the WFD report.
Hyosung and Huawei
Hyosung Information System is the leading data storage company in South Korea. Hyosung Professional Service Division collaborates with Huawei in a number of areas, including CCTV, servers, and networks. [4]
Hyosung’s U.S. Division holds a 46 percent market share of ATMs in the U.S., along with the personal data belonging to its American customers. Huawei’s close relationship with Hantle, Chungho, and Hyosung should raise a red flag and be a serious concern for Koreans and Americans.
NBC News analyst Frank Figliuzzi, a former assistant director of the FBI for counter-intelligence, said, “Chinese manufacturers can be forced to cooperate with requests from Chinese intelligence officials to share any information about the technology and therefore pose a risk for U.S. companies. That could include intellectual property, such as source code, materials, or blueprints. There is also the concern of machines shipped with undetected vulnerabilities or backdoors that could allow tampering.”
Privacy Violations of the Minjoo (Democratic) Party’s Big Data
The big data that the Minjoo Party of South Korea used in the election is a combination of micro-geography information provided by local governments and opinion poll information, consisting of nine elements: gender, age, residential area, household composition, marital status, housing space, residential type, living arrangement, and academic background.
The combination of two or more of these data points provides enough personally identifiable information, and this information is subject to the Personal Information Protection Act. Personal data can only be used with personal consent under the Personal Information Protection Act and the Information and Communication Protection Act. Yet, the Minjoo Party of Korea is found to have violated the above laws in the last elections.
Yang Jeong-cheol’s Role
Mr. Yang Jeong-cheol was the mastermind behind the Minjoo Party’s “lopsided victory” in the general election on April 15, 2020, which made him a hero for the Minjoo Party. What was strange, he chose to disappear from the limelight the day after the election. Asked by reporters about the election results, Yang stated, “I’m returning to plain life. The election results scare me very much….” His chief strategist Lee Geun-hyung resigned from the Minjoo Research Institute as well. Since then, Yang is nowhere to be found.
Yang had led an anti-American, socialist-oriented organization called “Struggle Committee for Anti-American, Independence, Anti-fascist, Democratization” in the 1980s. As the head of the Minjoo Institute, the think tank for the Party, he formed a partnership with the Chinese Communist Party and is believed to have been directly commissioned to process big data to Chinese I.T. company, Tencent, in 2019.
Yang brought in his close associates, Choi Jung-mook and Ko Han-seok, to supervise and manage the election campaign. Choi was an expert in polling, while Ko, a big data expert. Ko went on to become the Chief of Staff for late Mayor Park Won-soon. Ko is the person who had seen and talked with Mayor Park before he was found dead. Ko’s appointment to the Chief of Staff’s position drew a lot of attention at the time because of his association with the highly-reported North Korean spy ring incident and had served time in prison in 1992. He had worked with China I.T. in China for four years as its director of Internet business development.
Choi Jeong-mook was a close aide to Yang Jeong-cheol when Yang served as a public relations secretary during the Roh Moo-hyun administration. Moon Jae-in was Yang’s immediate supervisor as Cheong Wa Dae chief of staff.
Choi has provided Yang with the Micromap, or big data, that combines data from 14 polling stations secured by Ko Han-seok’s Public Window and data from the Seoul city and Gyeonggi provincial government agencies. Additionally, Yang built an election campaign system that combined big data of S.K. Telecom, K.T., and L.G. U+, which were secured exclusively by the Minjoo Party, who used it secretly nine months before the election. The Minjoo Party argues that they were able to win the election by effective utilization of the crowds, places, and time to campaign based on the big data.
Conclusion
The REPORT ON SOUTH KOREAN 4.15 ELECTION proves the imminent and ongoing danger of rigged elections via publicly available information. The report also reaffirms the possibility that South Korea’s April 15 general elections were an organized and well-designed manipulated election, suggesting a roadmap for a more targeted and effective approach to uncovering the true nature of the rigged elections.
The report reveals the individuals’ true identity and their questionable dealings with China’s I.T. giant, Tencent, which handled the combined big data. The report also addresses the Hantle System and its electronic counting machine, a key device in manipulating the vote count, and the NEC, the target of heavy criticism. The report calls for complete accountability and transparency on the part of the NEC in order to restore the public confidence about the electoral system and the future of democracy in South Korea.
[1] https://www.onekoreanetwork.com/article/investigation-into-election-fraud-rga33
[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/chinese-parts-hidden-ownership-growing-scrutiny-inside-america-s-biggest-n1104516
[3] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6588498-Senators-Letters-to-Private-Equity-1.html
[4] https://www.lightreading.com/huawei-video-resource-center/huawei-and-south-koreas-hyosung-information-systems/v/d-id/706392
