Despite impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol's insistence of election rigging, which he said last week was among the reasonsfor his Dec. 3 martial law declarations, government data showed Thursday that the court dismissed such claims in all the 150 related legal cases that have been concluded since 2020.
There have been 182 complaints filed against the National Election Commission making allegations of election rigging during the legislative and presidential elections since 2020, according to data obtained by Rep. Hwang Jung-a of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea.
This includes the 2020 and 2024 parliamentary elections, in which Yoon's conservative faction suffered crushing defeats. The suspended president and his supporters have attributed the loss to election rigging.
Thirty-two cases have not received a verdict yet. In all other cases the court dismissed all claims of election fraud or mishandling by the NEC.
The conservative bloc has accused the NEC of rigging the election via manipulating the early vote results, but multiple police investigations didn't find any evidence to back such claims. The most recent investigation by Gwacheon Police Station on the supposed manipulation of the 2024 parliamentary election concluded in August, with the case being dropped and not fowarded to the prosecutors.
Most of the investigations against the NEC were initiated after Yoon took office in 2022.
On Wednesday, another Democratic Party Rep. Park Sun-won disclosed an internal report, written in May last year by the Army's Defense Counterintelligence Command, one of the forces mobilized under Yoon's command during the martial law, that concluded that it was difficult to rig an election in the country.
The president is currently detained as part of a criminal investigation into insurrection and abuse of power in connection with his declaration of martial law and subsequent orders. He is also undergoing an impeachment trial, and has been suspended from office since Dec. 14.
Although Yoon said during Tuesday's hearing of his impeachment trial that the order to raid the NEC during the martial law was not to find evidence of election rigging, he said he wanted to "verify the facts" related to his doubts on the credibility of the NEC.
In a hand-written letter to the public released after his arrest on Jan. 15, he said that "there is a lot of evidence of election rigging."
None of the supposed evidence of such rigging have been verified by any investigative or legislative body as of yet, while some media platforms with relatively-low credibility have been making unconfirmed claims related to this matter.
The United States Forces Korea on Monday released a statement, categorically denying one such media report about a supposed joint operation of South Korean and US military that captured 99 Chinese spies at the NEC during the maritial law night. It said the report was "entirely false."
minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com
