Ruling and opposition parties plan to approve investigation plan at plenary session June 18
PPP floor leader Kim Han-gyu says party will not insist on chairing special committee
Jeong Jeom-sik vows not to delay probe negotiations
Prime Minister Kim Min-seok calls on NEC to 'wake up'
The full scale of mismanagement at the National Election Commission is coming into sharper focus in the wake of a ballot paper shortage that disrupted the June 3 local elections, as political parties move quickly to form a special parliamentary investigation committee.
The Democratic Party of Korea plans to put an investigation plan to a vote at a plenary session on June 18, according to political sources. A parliamentary investigation proceeds through several steps: reporting the request to the full chamber, adopting a special committee's investigation plan, and securing plenary approval.
Democratic Party floor leader Han Byung-do and People Power Party floor leader Jeong Jeom-sik met Thursday afternoon under the chairmanship of National Assembly Speaker Jo Jeong-sik and agreed on the need to move quickly on adopting an investigation plan. Observers say the two parties could reach a compromise relatively soon through negotiations.
Kim Han-gyu, the Democratic Party's senior floor policy deputy leader, said on KBS radio Friday that his party would not insist on chairing the special committee. "This is a problem with the NEC, a constitutionally independent body — it is not a problem of the Lee Jae Myung administration," he said. "We will consult appropriately with the PPP, and I believe those consultations will go well."
PPP floor leader Jeong, at his first press briefing since taking office Friday, proposed that the PPP chair the special committee while seats on the panel be split evenly between the two parties. "It is not right for the National Assembly to delay forming a special investigation committee over an incident in which citizens' right to vote was so brutally trampled," he said.
The two sides diverged, however, on the question of a special prosecutor. Kim said special prosecutor discussions could proceed in parallel but argued that the parliamentary probe and the joint investigative team should move first to avoid wasting time.
Jeong took a sharper line, saying the Democratic Party's position of waiting for investigation results before pursuing a special prosecutor amounted to obstructing the search for the truth.
Meanwhile, evidence of systemic NEC mismanagement during the election continues to mount. An external truth commission investigating the ballot paper shortage convened again Friday, focusing its inquiry on the shortage that occurred in Songpa-gu, Seoul.
Commission chair Cho Hyeon-uk said at a briefing Thursday that only 2,000 of the 17,000 unnumbered ballot papers that should have been distributed to the Songpa-gu election commission were actually delivered. A review of online chat logs involving Songpa-gu NEC staff, committee secretaries and clerks showed that the NEC failed to respond swiftly even as chaos on the ground grew severe, he said.
Compounding the picture, election officials in Gyeonggi Province were found to have entered vote-count results incorrectly in the education superintendent race — a problem that had already surfaced in North Jeolla Province. Election commissions in both regions issued public apologies, saying results had been corrected in accordance with proper procedures.
Prime Minister Kim Min-seok, chairing a ministerial meeting on violations of citizens' voting rights at the Government Complex Sejong on Thursday, said there were undoubtedly citizens calling for the NEC to be dissolved if it continued to operate this way. "The NEC must have a complete awakening," he said.
Wi Cheol-hwan, acting chair of the NEC, said the commission had failed to distribute ballot papers properly across 146 polling stations in Songpa-gu, even though the district as a whole had roughly 42,000 surplus ballots. "That failure in distribution was a deeply painful mistake," he said. "I again offer my sincere apologies for the damage done to citizens' right to vote."
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