[Anchor]

The special counsel team investigating the National Election Commission (NEC) has completed on-site verification of 2.47 million ballot papers stored at Seoul Olympic Park and transferred them to a secure warehouse. Thirteen boxes containing ballot papers deemed suspicious will be sent to the National Forensic Service for closer verification.

Reporter Bae Seong-jae has the details.

[Reporter]

NEC officials move boxes containing ballot papers outside, loading them one by one into a cargo truck under police guard.

The removal of the ballot papers stored at the Olympic Park Handball Gymnasium began around 6:30 a.m. yesterday (October 29).

This comes 146 days after the ballot papers were moved to the handball gymnasium.

Previously, the special counsel team's on-site verification, which started at 11:49 a.m. the day before yesterday, ended around 12:38 a.m. yesterday after about 13 hours.

[Lee Tae-han / Special Prosecutor for the National Election Commission: Respecting the objections raised by observers during the verification process, the special counsel voluntarily took possession of entire ballot boxes and selected a significant number of ballot papers deemed to require additional analysis....]

A total of 433 ballot boxes were found. Among them, 420 boxes containing ballot papers without any objections were moved to an NEC secure warehouse located in Gyeonggi Province.

However, the special counsel team has separately secured 13 boxes containing contested ballot papers and plans to conduct secondary verification.

The special counsel plans to conduct additional verification of the contested ballot papers and other items jointly with the National Forensic Service, and transition the matter into a formal investigation if problems are found.

Immediately after completing the verification early yesterday morning, the special counsel team attempted to move the boxes containing uncontested ballot papers outside. However, People Power Party figures, including leader Jang Dong-hyeok, protested, delaying the start of the ballot removal until around 6:30 a.m. yesterday.

[Jang Dong-hyeok / Leader, People Power Party: Those ballot boxes taken by the NEC and the special counsel still contain other evidence of election fraud.]

Some People Power Party observers also raised suspicions, such as discrepancies in the ballot counts, but there were no physical clashes during the removal process.

(Photo: Yonhap News)
Reported by Seol Min-hwan and Yang Hyun-cheol | Video by Lee Sang-min