The National Assembly's special committee on the parliamentary investigation into the ballot paper shortage during the June 3 local elections holds an on-site inspection and plenary session at the National Election Commission headquarters in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province, on Tuesday. [Yonhap]
The National Assembly's special committee on the parliamentary investigation into the ballot paper shortage during the June 3 local elections holds an on-site inspection and plenary session at the National Election Commission headquarters in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province, on Tuesday. [Yonhap]

The National Assembly's special committee on the parliamentary investigation into the June 3 local elections ballot paper shortage conducted an on-site inspection Tuesday of the National Election Commission headquarters and the Seoul Metropolitan Election Commission.

During a morning briefing to the committee, the National Election Commission estimated that verifying the local election ballot papers stored at the Jamsil Olympic Park counting center in Songpa-gu would take nine hours in total, require 440 personnel and cost 50 million won ($32,600).

About 2.47 million ballot papers are currently stored at the Jamsil counting center, the commission said. It proposed transferring them to its headquarters in Gwacheon, citing concerns that the Songpa-gu election commission building — which shares a structure with a kindergarten and a postpartum care center — could cause severe public inconvenience if protests outside the building continued for an extended period.

The commission also said that after the transfer, it plans to affix special tamper-evident seals signed by transfer observers to all entrances and install CCTV cameras inside and at entry points for continuous recording.

The commission stressed that "separate verification and other preliminary measures are needed before the transfer." However, it said there is no legal basis under current regulations for the commission to conduct a recount on its own authority, and that a National Assembly vote by the special committee would be required to verify that the ballot papers are the same ones used on election day.

The committee had previously conducted an on-site inspection Thursday at the Songpa-gu Election Commission and the Jamsil Olympic Park handball arena, where the ballot paper shortage first emerged. Following Tuesday's inspection, the committee plans to hold a first hearing July 14 and a second July 22 before adopting a final investigation report.

Meanwhile, both the Democratic Party of Korea and the People Power Party have called for the appointment of a special prosecutor in connection with the incident, but the two parties remain far apart on the details. The Democratic Party is pushing for a "third-party special prosecutor" model in which a trusted outside body such as the Korean Bar Association would recommend the appointee, while the People Power Party is insisting on an "opposition-recommended special prosecutor" that would exclude the Democratic Party from the nomination process.


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