Our Yoo Li-an is there. Li-an, do we have the final numbers yet?

Chery, Sean,... the election committee has confirmed that the final voter turnout is

56-point-8 percent. This is the highest turnout in 16 years.

It's also about two percentage points higher than the 54-point-5 percent recorded at the

last local election in 2010,.. making it the second highest voter turnout in all the five

past local elections. But still, it falls short of the 60-percent

expected by the election committee,... since a large group took part in the two-day early

voting period late last week. About 11-point-5 percent of all eligible voters

cast early ballots. Also, some pundits had predicted the Sewol-ho

ferry disaster would pull up voter participation,... but given the lower than expected voter turnout,..

it seems the disaster has only worked to turn the heads of voters away from politics.

The National Election Commission expects that we will have a pretty good sense of who has

won by 11 p.m. tonight, Korea time, but as there are many races that are neck-and-neck

this year,.. they expect the final results to come in at three to four hours past midnight.

Now the NEC has made extra efforts to increase election transparency,... and allowed anyone

interested in seeing the ballot count process to watch it live, on its homepage and major

portal sites including Naver and Youtube. I'm Yoo Li-an reporting live from the National

Election Commission.