[Anchor]

Polling Station No. 2 in Jamsil 7-dong, Seoul, has become a symbol of poor election management following a shortage of ballots. The shortage led to a suspension of voting and the embarrassing and disastrous situation of extending voting hours until 10 p.m. The protests from citizens sparked at this location became the catalyst for demonstrations at Olympic Park. We have exclusively obtained 67 hours of CCTV footage from the polling station, documenting the chaos that occurred from June 3 to June 10.

First, here is an exclusive report by Son Hyeong-an.

[Reporter]

This is the CCTV footage from inside Polling Station No. 2 in Jamsil 7-dong, Songpa-gu, Seoul, on the day of the June 3 local elections.

While it appears calm on the surface, signs of trouble emerged around 2:33 p.m., when it was reported that fewer than 500 ballots remained.

However, there was only a request for additional ballots, and no sense of urgency was visible among the staff.

Then, after 4:30 p.m., with only an hour and a half left until the polls were scheduled to close, the staff became frantic, making phone calls and explaining the situation to voters. At 4:46 p.m., voting was suspended.

Staff members gestured as if manual writing was necessary and distributed waiting numbers, but as the number of protesting citizens grew and the chaos intensified, police were dispatched to the scene.

As the waiting line collapsed, staff members rushed out with safety lines, and at 5:38 p.m., a man ran in carrying a paper envelope that appeared to contain additional ballots.

The National Election Commission initially stated that voting was suspended for 53 minutes and resumed at 5:39 p.m., but the CCTV footage shows that the actual resumption occurred at 5:59 p.m., just one minute before the polls closed—a 20-minute discrepancy.

According to the voting records from that time, the first batch of 50 additional ballots was insufficient. Amid the crowd of tangled citizens, a woman carrying a plastic bag ran in around 6:00 p.m.

This appears to be the second batch of 200 additional ballots recorded.

An elderly woman who arrived at the polling station around 4:45 p.m. was unable to vote due to the ballot shortage. Instead of going home, she sat on a chair and waited endlessly.

Although voting resumed late, she seemed to give up on waiting due to the long queue, but finally managed to exercise her right to vote and left the polling station with difficulty after waiting for a full hour and 20 minutes.

In effect, the threshold of voting, which should be accessible to everyone, became a barrier of hardship.

This CCTV footage was secured by Kim Jeong-cheol, a Supreme Council member of the Reform Party, who filed a request with the court to preserve the evidence. The confirmed number of eligible voters at Polling Station No. 2 was 3,856, and the initial number of ballots distributed was 1,900.

(Reported by Ha Ryung | Video by Won Hyeong-hui | Graphics by Hwang Se-yeon)