According to the National Election Commission, overseas missions and Gu/Si/Gun offices accepted applications for overseas voting for 91 days from July 22 to as of 13:00 on October 21 in preparation for the 18^th Presidential Election to be held on December 19. The NEC announced that approx. 217,000, 9.7% of the estimated number of 2,230,000 eligible overseas voters had applied for overseas voting. Some applications that came through the electronic mail system introduced on October 2 are currently in the qualification screening process by local embassies. Accurate final count is, therefore, expected to come available in the afternoon of October 22. Added to the existing number of 217,000, the figure will come to 220,000, approx. 10% of the total number of eligible overseas voters.

The number of overseas absentees who hold resident registration cards or who have reported domestic residence is 175,275 and that of overseas voters holding permanent residence of foreign countries is 42,232. The percentage of overseas absentees is 80.6%, while that of overseas voters is 19.4%.

Among the overseas embassies, the Embassy to Japan has accepted 12,503 applications which is the largest number, followed by the Consulate General in New York and in LA that have respectively received 9,980 and 9,865 applications. Meanwhile among the 3 countries, 48,461 overseas voters have submitted applications in the US, 36,089 in Japan and 35,193 in China.

Compared to the 19^th National Assembly elections, the number of applications for overseas voting has gone up by 76.2%. It is considered that overseas voters have more interest in the presidential election than in the National Assembly elections. In addition, the Public Official Election Act revised by the National Assembly is considered to have affected in some way the increase in the number of applications by permitting the walk-around application system, proxy applications by family members (2,293 cases) and applications via e-mail (15,739 cases).

According to the NEC, however, there still existed difficulties encouraging participation by overseas voters residing far from overseas missions, without legalized ways to facilitate voting. In the NEC’s judgment, polling stations are only established at missions under the current system, which hinders hundreds of thousands of overseas voters willing to vote from visiting the corresponding missions.

In addition, the NEC has only launched the management of overseas voting in the two major elections (Presidential election & National Assembly election) this year. The NEC has accordingly gone through difficulties estimating the number of eligible overseas voters and predicting the voter turnout due to inaccurate statistics of overseas Koreans. The NEC also pointed out a necessity for innovative improvements to the system for establishing an overseas voters list after the presidential election, such as accepting registrations for overseas voting on a regular basis.

Meanwhile, the overseas voters list will be finalized on November 19, 30 days before Election Day, after the list is established from October 31 to November 9 based on the received applications and the list comes available for public reading. Overseas voters on the finalized list will be expected to cast their valuable ballots at polling stations located in 164 overseas missions from December 5 to 10.

The NEC expressed a gratitude to overseas Koreans who have submitted applications to take part in the 18^th Presidential Election despite tough circumstances and kindly requested them to make sure their votes are cast.