SEOUL — South Koreans voted Tuesday in an out-of-cycle presidential election, following the ouster of former President Yoon Suk Yeol over his botched attempt to impose emergency martial law in early December.
The main candidates are front-runner Lee Jae-myung of the left-leaning Democratic Party and Kim Moon-soo of the conservative People Power Party. .
While we wait for results, here are some of our recent articles on this pivotal election.
– In South Korea election, voters seek economy fixes after 6 months of chaos
– South Koreans vote for their next president: 5 things to know
– Japan wary of a possible Lee Jae-myung presidency in South Korea
– South Korea’s presidential candidates pledge to nurture AI economy
– What happened to South Korea’s progressive movement?
Follow all the key developments with us here on our live blog.
Here’s the latest (South Korea time):
8 p.m. Polls close. Now we await exit polls, projections and results.
7:42 p.m. As of 7 p.m., voter turnout stood at 77.8%, surpassing the figure recorded in the previous presidential election, according to the National Election Commission. Polls close at 8 p.m.
7:03 p.m. Less than an hour to go now.
6:46 p.m. And some photos from earlier in the day:
6:42 p.m. Celebrities are also getting involved. Jin of BTS cast his vote in Seoul this morning. Karina of the popular girl band Aespa caused a stir online last week after she posted a photo of her in a red jacket with the number 2 embedded on it. Speculators alleged she was hinting at her support for Kim Moon-soo of the PPP — Kim’s party color is red and he is No. 2 on the candidate list. She denied any correlation between her fashion choice and her political views.
6:15 p.m. Take a look at a video we took inside a voting station in Seoul earlier.
6:08 p.m. As of 6 p.m., voter turnout was recorded at 76.1%, one percentage point below the figure logged in the previous presidential election in 2022, according to the National Election Commission. The figure includes early voting that took place on Thursday and Friday.
6 p.m. Just two hours now until polls close.
5 p.m. On election day, both of the main candidates continued with messaging they had drawn on throughout the campaign, depicting themselves as bulwarks against chaos.
Poll leader Lee Jae-myung wrote in a public message on Tuesday afternoon that voting was the way to save South Korea from “greed of vested interests,” though he did not specify what vested interests he was referring to. “Please come forward again as citizens of the Republic of Korea, I earnestly implore you,” Lee wrote.
Conservative candidate Kim Moon-soo wrote a message on his Facebook page pledging to “block a monstrous dictatorship” while protecting “free democracy, the rule of law, the market economy and the [South] Korea-U.S. alliance.”
2:20 p.m. As of 2 p.m., 65.5% of eligible voters had cast their ballots, which was 0.7 percentage point higher than the previous presidential election in 2022, Yonhap news agency reported, citing figures from the National Election Commission.
The 2022 contest logged the highest voter turnout in the history of South Korean elections, raising the possibility of record-setting turnout in Tuesday’s polls. One factor in the high turnout could be the weather, as warm temperatures and clear conditions are forecast across the country. In Seoul, the temperature currently stands at around 24C with sunshine and low levels of fine-dust air pollution, according to the Korea Meteorological Administration.
1 p.m. South Korea’s National Police Agency said it will station 28,590 police officers across the polling stations, according to the Yonhap news agency. Police said they would maintain the “highest level of emergency security,” with all personnel on standby until the newly elected president enters office.
6 a.m. Polls open at 14,295 polling stations across the country.
