Anchor: President Yoon Suk Yeol has acknowledged that he ordered troops to be sent to the nation’s election watchdog when the country was under martial law. During an impeachment hearing Tuesday, Yoon said he suspected election fraud, arguing this constituted an emergency that justified his martial law decree. 
Kim Bum-soo has more. 
 
Report: President Yoon Suk Yeol testified that he is the one who ordered the dispatching of troops to the offices of the National Election Commission(NEC) during the brief time he imposed martial law in December.
 
Yoon made the statement during the fifth hearing of his impeachment trial at the Constitutional Court on Tuesday, saying the discovery of what he called “nonsense ballots” led him to conclude there were problems with elections.

[Sound bite: President Yoon Suk Yeol (Korean-English)]
"When I was in the prosecutor's office, I was constantly briefed on election cases and elections lawsuits, and when you open the ballot box, there were a lot of 'nonsense' ballots that were unacceptable for many reasons from a common sense point of view. Although people use the word ‘election fraud’ in different ways, I thought this could be problematic.”

The suspended president told the court that he ordered then-defense minister Kim Yong-hyun to send troops to the election watchdog’s offices while discussing plans for martial law in late November. 
 
Yoon said the troops’ mandate was not to conduct any criminal investigations, but to check the election watchdog’s computer systems and how they were operating.
 
A total of 297 soldiers were dispatched to the NEC on the night of December 3, even before some 230 troops were sent to the National Assembly.
 
In a handwritten letter released the day Yoon was arrested last month, the president said there was ample evidence of election rigging in the country, made possible by the NEC’s nonsensical system.
 
The NEC countered Yoon’s claims in a previous statement, saying that courts have already examined allegations of election fraud raised after past elections and found every single one groundless.
 
There have been 182 complaints filed against the election watchdog alleging election fraud during general and presidential elections. 

While dozens of cases have yet to result in a verdict, the court has so far dismissed all the other election-rigging claims, according to data obtained by Rep. Hwang Jung-a of the main opposition Democratic Party.
Kim Bum-soo, KBS World Radio News.