마스크•장갑 중무장…제21대 국회의원선거 개표<br /><br />As we gradually get a clearer picture of the candidates who have been able to win over voters... it's turning out to be a long night for election workers,... who have been focused on the all important task of counting ballots.<br />Our Kim Dami joins us live from one of the counting centers in Seoul.<br />Dami, roughly three hours into vote counting, how far along are we?<br />Hi, Conn-young.<br />As you can see right behind me, hundreds of people are still diligently counting the votes. In the last general election in 2016, it took around 8 hours to get the final results, but this year it's going to take longer.<br />Here's what we have so far...<br />As for the ballot count across the nation, as of 11 PM, it stood at 52-point-5 percent.<br />Breaking it down by the major regions of South Korea...<br />In Seoul, we stood at 38-point-3 percent.<br />In Gyeonggi-do 53-point-7 percent.<br />In Busan 46-point-8 percent.<br />and Daegu at 43-point-4 percent.<br />Hopefully, we should be able to see some results taking shape by around 2 AM.<br />In fact, the National Election Commission predicts that for single member districts, vote counting will end... at around 4 AM.<br />But for the proportional representation seats, counting will go on until 8 AM, and the final results will be announced on Thursday afternoon.<br />This is because while the district ballots are counted by machine, the PR ballots this year are too long for the machines, so they have to be counted by hand.<br />They're so long because this year there are 35 parties, which is a record number.<br />Across the country there are around 64-thousand vote counters, an increase of 35 percent from the last election.<br />On top of the need for manual vote counting, things are different this time because of the COVID-19 crisis.<br />ALL the vote counters are wearing masks and gloves while keeping an appropriate distance from one another.<br />The top priorities this election are sanition and safety, so the polling stations are ventilated on a regular basis. And any volunteer who feels unwell will leave the facility immediately.<br />For real-time updates, the National Election Commission is also providing the count online.<br />That's all from me, Conn-young.<br />
