The E-Voting Promotion Council is a consultative body set up by the National Election Commission to push for implementation of e-voting. It is comprised of personnel from political, administrative, academic and civic circles.

An integral part of representative democracy, as constitutionally adopted by the Republic of Korea, is voting. Representative democracy is based on a mechanism whereby representatives of the people are selected via election to manage the state's affairs for a certain period of time. Thus, the election system and process have a material impact on the country's development as well as the daily life of its populace. Against this backdrop, it can be said that a fair, efficient and clean election constitutes the foundation of democracy.

I firmly believe that the Republic of Korea has laid the groundwork for implementation of a fair and clean election thanks to your diligent efforts.

Not remaining complacent with such progress, the National Election Commission has established the E-Voting Promotion Council to overhaul its election administration into one commensurate with an information society.

In the era of informatization, we have strived to develop new approaches to voting and ballot counting to ensure that the country's election system fully reflects people's opinions and develops in an efficient, convenient and stable manner.

We are seeking to introduce a touch-screen voting system in the near future and, over the longer term, a remote Internet voting system, to replace the long-standing paper ballot system.

I firmly believe that such endeavors will contribute to the full reflection of your opinions in future elections and upgrading of Korea's election-based representative democracy by ensuring the fairness, convenience, swiftness and transparency of voting and ballot counting.

I hope that you will take great interest in the development and introduction of the e-voting system and feel free to submit your valuable opinions.