Posts falsely share unrelated photo as proof of fraud in 2020 Korean polls

"NEC, the mastermind of the general election fraud on April 15, 2020, committed a crime that is unheard of in other parts of the world... there is no way this criminal gang NEC leaves any proof that leads them to the election fraud," the Korean-language claim reads in part shared here on Facebook.

The claim was shared alongside a photo that shows what appears to be shredded paper falling from the back of a van, alongside Korean-language text which reads, "National Election Commission is destroying all documents."

The claim was shared online as South Korea's state audit agency began an investigation into allegations of preferential hiring at the NEC (archived link)

The probe is focused on preferential hiring and promotions for family members of high-ranking NEC officials but allegations of electoral rigging by the body -- the subject of an existing conspiracy theory in South Korea -- are not under investigation.

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Screenshot of the misleading claim shared on Facebook. Captured June 13, 2023.

Comments in the posts linked the photo to the conspiracy theory that the NEC swayed past national elections in favour of South Korea's Democratic Party, particularly the 2020 general election, which the party won by a landslide (archived links here and here).

"Prosecutors should have raided the NEC immediately. They let the NEC turn mountains of stolen ballots into dust," wrote one user.

"This is an extremely criminal case of evidence destruction related to the usurpation of electoral democracy," another wrote.

The same image was shared alongside similar claims on Facebook here, here and here.

But the image was first published online in April 2017 on the blog of the shredding company, whose head told AFP the image showed a local operation unrelated to the NEC.

2017 photo

A keyword search on Naver, South Korea's most popular internet portal, found a Naver blog operated by a local shredding company which destroys documents on commission (archived links here and here).

AFP found dozens of posts, including here and here, containing images of a truck containing shredded paper from jobs taken by the company in various locations (archived links here and here).

The original image was found in a post from April 19, 2017 -- preceding the 2020 elections -- which describes a shredding job done for a local university (archived link).

Below is a screenshot comparison between the image shared alongside the misleading claim on Facebook (left) and the original photo published on the Naver Blog in April 2017 (right):

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Screenshot comparison between the image shared alongside the misleading claim on Facebook (left) and the original photo published on the Naver Blog in April 2017 (right)

"We received a commission for document shredding from Daegu's Yeungnam University College. The documents weighed around two tons, and we completed the job neatly in just two hours," the post reads, referring to a local college (archived link).

Alongside the image of the shredded paper on the truck, the post also includes three other photos that show workers carrying what appear to be documents into the truck containing the shredder.

AFP could find no posts in the blog mentioning the NEC, nor are there any posts after February 2019.

The company's head said he was "baffled" by the misleading claim, as "this photo has nothing to do with the National Election Commission but was taken six years ago in 2017 during a regular shredding job in Daegu."

"We've never performed work for the NEC in the past, as we are a firm specialising in regional operations around Daegu, where we are based," he told AFP on June 15,

Saying there were "countless photos identical to this on our blog and the websites of all our competitors," the businessman added the Facebook claim looked like "someone just took one of these photos and made up this claim."

Election fraud claims

Claims of fraud in the 2020 general election have been repeatedly raised not only by social media users, but also by politicians such as the country's former prime minister (archived link).

But South Korea's Supreme Court on July 28, 2022, dismissed a former lawmaker's suit to have the results of the 2020 general election annulled based on various allegations of fraud (archived link).

The court found no evidence to support claims that votes had been tampered with, adding that the plaintiff "failed to meet the burden of proof necessary for an electoral suit, by presenting allegations without clearly proving which party committed the alleged fraud that would warrant annulment of the election results" (archived link).