South Koreans Vote in Crucial Local Elections

South Koreans hit the polls Wednesday to elect mayors, governors, local council members and regional education chiefs in crucial local elections that could set the path for the Lee Jae Myung administration in its second year in office.

Voting kicked off at 6:00 a.m. and will continue until 6:00 p.m. at 14,288 polling stations nationwide, according to the National Election Commission (NEC).

More than 44.6 million people are eligible to vote, including 10.4 million who already cast ballots during two days of early voting last week.

Voter turnout stood at 7.4 percent, or 3.32 million, as of 9 a.m., up 1.4 percentage points from the previous local elections in 2022, the NEC said. Seoul's turnout was recorded at 6.9 percent.

Turnout for the two-day advance voting last week came to an all-time high of 23.51 percent, raising expectations that overall turnout could surpass 60 percent. The early voting turnout will be counted in the overall turnout tally starting at 1 p.m.

The elections are widely seen as the first nationwide test for the Lee administration following its inauguration in June 2025 after former President Yoon Suk Yeol was removed from office over his botched martial law bid.

Up for grabs are 16 mayoral and gubernatorial posts, and 16 education superintendent seats, along with 227 heads of local governments and some 4,000 members of local councils.

Also at stake are 14 National Assembly seats in parliamentary by-elections taking place in the equal number of constituencies, including those in Incheon and Gyeonggi Province, as well as the southeastern cities of Daegu and Busan.

While the ruling Democratic Party (DP) initially aimed for a landslide victory, recent surveys have shown races tightening with the main opposition People Power Party (PPP).

The DP now considers six out of the 16 key races as competitive battlegrounds, including Seoul, and the southeastern cities of Busan and Ulsan.

Among them, the Seoul mayoral race is widely expected to be one of the key battlegrounds in this year's local elections, with recent polls showing incumbent Mayor Oh Se-hoon of the PPP and DP candidate Chong Won-o in a neck-and-neck race.

The capital region -- home to roughly half of the country's population -- is often considered a key, if not the most important, battleground.

As for the parliamentary by-elections, one of the most closely watched races is the Buk-A constituency in the southeastern city of Busan, where Ha Jung-woo, a former presidential secretary to Lee for artificial intelligence policy and future planning, faces former PPP leader Han Dong-hoon, who is running as an independent, and former PPP lawmaker Park Min-shik.

Recent polls showed Han and Ha locked in a tight race with the lead swinging back and forth between the two, while Park trailed behind both candidates.

Of the 14 assembly seats at stake, 13 were previously held by the ruling party.

Backed by President Lee's solid approval ratings, the DP, which holds a parliamentary majority, hopes to safeguard its seats to strengthen the party's legislative momentum.

The PPP seeks to shore up conservative support as it looks to rebuild the conservative bloc amid declining public support and growing internal rifts in the aftermath of Yoon's botched bid to impose martial law in December 2024.

The conservative party had swept 12 out of 17 major gubernatorial and mayoral positions in the 2022 local elections held a month after Yoon took office.