South Koreans vote in national elections amid virus fears
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South Korean voters wore masks and moved slowly between lines of tape at polling stations on Wednesday to elect lawmakers in the shadows of the spreading coronavirus.
The government resisted calls to postpone the parliamentary elections billed as a midterm referendum for President Moon Jae-in, who enters the final years of his term grappling with a historic public health crisis that is unleashing massive economic shock.
While South Korea’s electorate is deeply divided along ideological and generational lines and regional loyalties, recent surveys showed growing support for Moon and his liberal party, reflecting the public’s approval of an aggressive test-and-quarantine program so far credited for lower fatality rates compared to worst-hit areas in China, Europe and North America.
The long lines that snaked around public offices and schools followed record-high participation in early voting held on Friday and Saturday, and seemed to defy expectations of low voter turnout in the middle of an active campaign to minimize social contact to slow infections.
To hold the parliamentary elections as scheduled, South Korean election officials and health authorities drew up a deliberate set of preventive measures to reduce risks of the virus being transmitted.
Duct tape or stickers marked a meter (3 feet) of social-distancing space from nearby streets to ballot booths. Masked poll workers checked temperatures of arrivals and whisked anyone with a fever or not wearing a mask to separate areas to vote, sanitizing the facilities after they do. Voters who passed the fever screening got sanitizing gel and disposable plastic gloves before entering booths to cast their ballots.
The government also mapped out a voting process for citizens quarantined at their homes, a number that ballooned after the country began enforcing two-week quarantines on all arrivals from overseas on April 1.
