South Koreans turned out in force to vote in the presidential election on Tuesday, as millions of people sought to restore stability after six months of turmoil triggered by a shock martial law briefly imposed by former leader Yoon Suk Yeol.<\/p>\n
The new president will face the challenge of rallying a society deeply scarred by the attempt at military rule and an export-heavy economy reeling from unpredictable protectionist moves by the United States, a major trading partner and a security ally.<\/p>\n
As of 3 p.m., 30.5 million people, or nearly 69% of the electorate, had voted at 14,295 locations, according to the National Election Commission, with car dealerships, gyms and fields for traditional Korean wrestling known as ssireum turned into polling stations.<\/p>\n
“I hope the issues surrounding martial law are addressed more clearly and transparently,” said 40-year-old Seoul resident Kim Yong-Hyun. “There are still many things that don’t make sense, and I’d like to see them properly resolved.”<\/p>\n
Turnout in the snap election was running slightly ahead of the 2022 presidential vote at the same time, with polls set to remain open until 8 p.m. (1100 GMT) and following early voting when more than a third of the 44.39 million eligible voters cast their ballots.<\/p>\n
“Only six golden hours are left to save South Korea which is in crisis due to the greed of the establishment,” liberal frontrunner Lee Jae-myung said as he urged people to vote in a Facebook post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South Koreans turned out in force to vote in the presidential election on Tuesday, as millions of people sought to restore stability after six months of turmoil triggered by a shock martial law briefly imposed by former leader Yoon Suk Yeol. The new president will face the challenge of rallying a society deeply scarred by …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49759"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49762,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49759\/revisions\/49762"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}