Voter registration for next year’s general elections will kick off Sunday for Koreans living abroad, the National Election Commission said Friday. Registration will end on Feb. 11.

Overseas residents with Korean nationality or those living abroad temporarily though they have registered resident addresses in Korea, aged 19 and older, are eligible to register by visiting local designated diplomatic offices.

Based on information supplied, the commission will confirm the list of voters in March next year, then run voting proceedings from March 28 to April 2 at 158 stations across the world, officials said.

Diplomatic offices stationed in politically unstable countries such as Yemen, Afghanistan and Libya will not be used for overseas voting next year.

The first poll to allow Korean overseas citizens to cast ballots has emerged as an important factor for the general and presidential elections next year.

In 1999, the Constitutional Court ruled it illegal to exclude overseas Koreans from elections. In 2007, the court upheld petitioners’ claim that a law without rules on practical steps for overseas Koreans to exercise their voting rights is not in accord with the Constitution.

Upon the ruling, the National Assembly revised the related laws in 2009 for overseas residents with Korean nationality to exercise voting rights.

Currently, 2.79 million Korean nationals are living overseas and 1.15 million of them are permanent residents, according to the Foreign Ministry as of July.

Permanent residents may elect only proportional representatives in general elections because they have no resident registration address in Korea so they cannot be assigned to a specific constituency.

The commission last month launched the overseas election control center to keep open a direct 24-hour communication channel with all voting stations and voters. It also held two mock elections over the past year to detect problems in the system to be implemented for the first time.

“We will keep an eye on possible election irregularities and intervention by overseas pro-North Korean groups,” said an NEC official.

By Bae Hyun-jung (tellme@heraldcorp.com)