Former and incumbent officials from the nation’s spy agency and the state election watchdog testified at President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment trial at the Constitutional Court on Tuesday regarding election fraud allegations. 

Baek Jong-wook, former third deputy director of the National Intelligence Service(NIS), said at the seventh hearing that the NIS conducted a security inspection of the computer system of the National Election Commission(NEC) from July to September 2023. 

Baek said the 2023 inspection found vulnerabilities and the potential for hacking, but no evidence of election fraud. 

NEC Secretary General Kim Yong-bin testified that there was no election fraud and most of the allegations about the election system were false. 

After the hearing, Yoon’s legal team told reporters that Tuesday’s testimony confirmed that the NIS inspection found various problems in the NEC system. 

The representatives of the National Assembly’s impeachment panel said election fraud is not a major issue in Yoon’s impeachment trial and that Yoon’s side is trying to make it a point of contention to incite the president’s extreme right-wing supporters.

But Yoon’s team says evidence of election fraud constituted a national emergency that made it necessary to declare martial law. 

In a handwritten letter from Yoon to his supporters, posted on the president’s social media account shortly after his arrest on January 15, he claimed there was evidence of election rigging, made possible by the NEC’s “nonsensical” election system.