Yoon wins by 0.74% point; Huh Kyung-young gets 0.83% of votes

Wednesday’s election came down to the slimmest margin ever seen in South Korean presidential election history, with the conservative opposition’s Yoon Suk-yeol beating his rival from the ruling camp, Lee Jae-myung, by just over 247,000 votes. It was the tightest race ever seen in the country’s 35-year-old democracy.

Yoon, who was until March last year the country’s prosecutor general, took 48.56 percent of votes cast, just 0.73 of a percentage point ahead of former Gyeonggi Province Governor Lee who garnered 47.83 percent.

To put the figures into context, the gap between the two front-runners of 247,077 votes was smaller than the number of votes declared invalid.

A total of 307,542 votes were unable to be counted for any of the 12 candidates in the race, considerably larger than the number of invalid votes in previous elections.

The 247,000-vote gap also is also less than the number of votes that Huh Kyung-young, considered one of the most eccentric candidates, received.

Huh, the founder and chairman of the National Revolutionary Party, came in fourth place after Sim Sang-jung of the Justice Party. Huh earned 281,481 votes, or 0.83 percent of all votes.

Huh is known for his “unrealistic” pledges, including one to dole out 100 million won ($81,400) in one-off bonuses and 1.5 million won in monthly stipends for all citizens aged 18 and older, if elected.

By Korea Herald (khnews@heraldcorp.com)