On February 18, 2010, ceremonies for promoting Election Surveillance Unit (ESU) were held in 249 local Election Commissions. The ESU is a task force team to supervise and crack down on rigged election for carrying out the 5^th Nationwide Local Elections successfully and its members are ordinary citizens nominated by local Election Commissions.

As the election is approaching, National Election Commission of Korea (NEC) is going to strengthen watch dog activity by expanding ESU members gradually to 7,700 by 60 days before the local elections. Thus, the total number of workers related to watch dog activity will amount to about 30,000 including local election workers and ESU member citizens.

The NEC is running ESU on a national scale consisting of approximately 2,500 members to carry out surveillance activity to prevent fraudulent election since the 5^th National Local Elections is massive in its size. The number of public officials is 3,991 to be elected in the 5^th Nationwide Local Elections and the candidates are expected to be 15,500. The promoting ceremony was the chance to pledge to carry out fair election and to arouse citizens’ attention to clean election.