Live from ballot counting station for S. Korea's next president

Now, while we have a clear winner, ballot counting continues until all the votes are counted.

Our Park Kun-woo is standing by at one of the counting stations.

Kun-woo, how's it looking there?

Jung-min, I'm currently standing at the ballot counting station set up at Seoul National University in southern Seoul, one of the 2-hundred-54 counting stations nationwide.

As you mentioned, we do seem to have a clear winner after five to six hours of counting, but as the counting rate still stands at over 80 percent, the process continues.

The process here has been running smoothly and orderly.

There was even some snack time at around midnight for the people counting to have a break.

However, in some places, there were minor disturbances as a few observers shouted that the process seemed suspicious or that the CCTV inside wasn't working properly.

Police intervened to restore order and allow the counting to continue.

The National Election Commission expects the counting to be completed by 6 AM Wednesday.

Then at 7 to 9 AM, the NEC is expected to confirm the winner.

Right afterwards, the winner will be able to start his presidential term.

Now, about the eight key sections, how the counting works.

First, after the ballot boxes were transported to counting stations under a police escort and with election observers, they were checked for any issues.

Then, the boxes were opened, and ballots were neatly organized.

The ballots are then fed into a sorting machine that automatically classifies them by candidate.

Introduced in 2002, the machine has significantly sped up the process.

And the machines aren't connected to any network, making hacking them impossible.

Classified ballots are known to be manually checked in this election.

The ballots are then manually checked once more to filter out any invalid votes.

It then goes through two final rounds of verification, and then there's an official announcement by the commissioner.

What's being done to ensure transparency throughout the ballot-counting process?

A total of around 70-thousand personnel have been deployed to ensure transparency, especially as there has been some speculation of electoral fraud.

Personnel includes election observers -6 from each party with a candidate, and 3 for each independent candidate.

Police authorities raised the national emergency level alert to the highest, "Gapho," from 6 AM this morning nationwide, enabling full mobilization, including special security forces outside counting centers.

The National Fire Agency has been mobilized in case of emergencies as well.

And that's all I have for you now.

Back to you, Jung-min.