Partial results have shown that South Korea’s left-leaning ruling party has won a landslide victory in the country’s general election, after the corona virus pandemic turned the political tide in President MOON JAE-IN’S favour. 

The country uses a mix of first-past-the-post seats and proportional representation, but even before all the individual constituencies were decided, MOON’s Democratic Party had taken 163 seats in the 300-member National Assembly, which is an absolute majority.

South Korea is among the first countries to hold a national election during the pandemic, with citizens still being asked to maintain social distancing after enduring one of the worst early outbreaks of the virus. 

All voters were required to wear protective masks, clean their hands with sanitizer and don plastic gloves, and undergo temperature checks on arrival at the polling station.