People Power Party lawmaker Lee Man-hee [Photo by Lee Sang-sub]
People Power Party lawmaker Lee Man-hee [Photo by Lee Sang-sub]

People Power Party lawmaker Lee Man-hee said Sunday that an emergency inspection of access card management at the National Election Commission had confirmed the large-scale loss of passes to the data center — a core election security facility — as well as to the commission's main building.

According to Lee, the data center on the second floor of the NEC's main building is a critical security facility that operates the election management systems and equipment. Of the 107 access cards authorized for entry, 14 have been confirmed missing.

The NEC initially told Lee that 19 data center access cards had been lost, but conducted an internal review during the inquiry and located five of them, revising the figure down to 14.

The missing cards grant access to the computer operations room inside the data center, which houses equipment connected to 46 systems — including an integrated voter registry containing citizens' names, genders, dates of birth and addresses, as well as vote-counting reporting systems and overseas election management systems. Before the Dec. 3 martial law declaration last year, the same cards also allowed entry to the server room.

Lee also found that the NEC installed an iris recognition system for the server room in 2019 but failed to put it into full use until after the martial law declaration. The commission subsequently spent 28.95 million won ($18,800) on additional security doors and CCTV installations.

Gaps in the management of general building passes were also exposed. Of 398 passes issued over the past seven years, 129 had not been returned. After Lee raised the issue, the NEC said Thursday it had recovered 11 of them, but 118 remain unaccounted for.

"It is deeply deplorable that such a large-scale loss of access cards has come to light at the NEC — an agency that holds more personal data on individual citizens than almost any other and that operates the country's election systems," Lee said.

He added that no one had been held accountable for the mass loss of access cards, asking which citizen could possibly accept that. Lee called for the truth to be fully established not only through the ongoing joint police-prosecution investigation and the National Assembly's parliamentary investigation, but also through a special prosecutor's office when one is launched.


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