Believe it or not President Roh Moo-hyon stole the precidency by manipulating automated counting machines in the 16th presidential Election on December 19 in 2002. One week before the election Korean National Election Commission annonced that they decided to use the machines. They should have announced it at least three months ahead of the election because if the computer program was to be checked by the opposition party they needed at least three months to check that the machines were working properly.

Many people including opposition parties could not believe their decision to use strange machines that were never proved or tested. The commission explained that they decided to use them to save money and time. Nonsense! They had already wasted a tremendous amount of money for developing the machines and computer programs. Election officials could only save a couple of hours by using them. There was no good reason for using unknown and unproven machines. Anyhow nobody could stop their mission.

Hannara Party which was the number one opposition party had to decide whether they would accept the use of the ballot counting machine or not. Believe it or not Hannnara Party approved their use without seeing or examining the computer program. Two representatives from Hannara party who were in position of deciding whether to accept them or not were not knowlegable about the machines and computer programs. They looked at the machine being demonstrated but they could not look inside the machine because they were neither qualified to examin the complete operation of the machines or the computer program. But they approved the use of them!

There is a lot of evidence that the program was preplanned for making Rho Moo-heon as president. Rho kept 2.3% ahead of Lee in a sea-saw battle between the two candidates making the election results appear real. According to several polls conducted before the election Lee led Rho at least 20% in Yesan, his home town, and nearby. However, Lee barely led Rho in elction results. In Honam areas popularity of Lee was 8% before the election but he got only 1.8% from the voters who participated voting. Lee was half winning according to several polls conducted before the election in most areas in Seoul. But he was mostly beaten by Rho in the election.

Rho was elected as the 16th Korean president but we believe he stole the presidency. Jusimo, a non governmental organisation, sued the commission for an improper automated counting during the presidential election at Supreme Court on January 18, 2003 but the court dismissed the case without verifying that the machines were working properly. Even though the case was dismissed strong suspicion have remained. We expect there will be some confess from participants in the secret mission.

The suspect machines never died. Being the envy of Rho's winning by using the machines Phillippino's ruling party imported 2,000 of them hoping to win the presidential election by using them. The opposition party was smarter than Korean Hannara Party. They applied for provisional disposition to suspend to use them. The supreme court agreed because it was identified as the most vulnerable to wholescale cheating. What a shame for Korea to be associated with these machines!

This article is written by Korean Solidarity for Anti-Corruption, #1115 Hanlaclassic, 824-11 Yoksamdong, Kangnamkoo, Seoul, Korea. Phone: 82-2-558-5544 765