The National Election Commission headquarters in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi, is seen on June 10. The sculpture in front of the building incorporates the Korean phrase meaning “Elections are the flower of democracy.”NEWS1
Im Jang-hyuk
The author is a lawyer and the head of the political news department at the JoongAng Ilbo.
The National Election Commission (NEC), a consensus-based constitutional body, was a prized product of Korea’s democratic aspirations.
“The National Election Commission shall be established for the fair management of elections.” That sentence, added as Article 75-2 in the third constitutional amendment on June 15, 1960, marked a political turning point alongside the adoption of a parliamentary cabinet system and bicameral legislature. Since the rigged March 15, 1960, election under Syngman Rhee directly triggered the April 19 Revolution, who would administer elections and how was central to political reform.
Until then, the Central Election Committee was a temporary body under the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, established only in election years. Election administration was handled by officials dispatched from government agencies. Lee Sang-gyu, an attorney who served on the committee on the Democratic Party’s recommendation and helplessly watched local authorities and police mobilized for the March 15 election fraud, appealed at a National Assembly hearing on May 19, 1960, for “an organization that allows the election committee to function like one.” Because dispatched officials remained under the personnel authority of governors or other agencies, he argued, the election body itself needed personnel authority to operate properly.
The commission briefly shut down after the May 16, 1961 coup deprived it of funding. But its status as an independent constitutional institution survived the 1962 amendment restoring the presidential system. On Jan. 21, 1963, it became the permanent National Election Commission. Critics had argued that maintaining a permanent organization when elections were not held every year would waste work force and money. Independence, however, was an irresistible demand of the times.
Six decades later, that “independence” has deteriorated into chronic insularity. With a self-contained nationwide organization of more than 3,000 employees, the NEC has become an enviable workplace. Work-life balance is guaranteed in nonelection years while leave-taking surges in election years. There are also opportunities for overseas postings as election officers. In this world largely insulated from outside scrutiny, even preferential hiring practices emerged to pass desirable jobs on to employees’ children.
The bizarre failures of running short of ballots and incorrectly entering turnout figures are products of the irresponsibility, lethargy and complacency bred by that insularity. As independence turned into isolation, fairness also eroded. The NEC’s interpretations of election law, once like traffic lights imposing order on democracy, have increasingly become sources of political controversy. Perhaps the collective calculation was that accommodating the ruling party of the day was the easiest way to protect entrenched privileges.
The illness is too advanced for minor repairs. In an internal survey by the NEC labor union, 88.5 percent of respondents — 1,007 of 1,138 among 3,007 employees — supported transferring election administration to the Interior Ministry. If only the solution were that simple. It would require a constitutional amendment and run against public common sense. The opposition would hardly agree to entrust elections to a government ministry with no formal independence simply because excessive independence has produced abuses.
Since radical surgery to remove the institution is unrealistic, precise treatment is needed to target the malignancies within it. Concrete ways must be found, within the Constitution, to open the organization and subject it to meaningful oversight and checks.
The opposition should take the lead. The ruling camp, having already replaced the standing commissioner with a political appointee and begun creating new lines of allegiance within the NEC, will find it difficult to resist the temptation to preserve the status quo.
Yet looking at the opposition only produces a sigh. During two months of a parliamentary investigation into the NEC, opposition politicians have spent more time arguing over whether the problem should be called “poorly managed elections” or “rigged elections” than devising solutions. It is a struggle between those seeking to move closer to hard-line conservatives convinced of election fraud ahead of the next party leadership race and those trying to distance themselves from them. The golden time for reform is slipping away.
Reforms affecting the NEC’s organization and duties must be completed when no election is underway. It would be dangerously complacent to wait until the parliamentary investigation ends and a special counsel completes its investigation before seeking institutional remedies. Korea may have to hold another major election next year.
For once, can the opposition not show that it is capable of leading the effort to solve a problem?
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
