SEOUL - South Koreans on Wednesday went to the polls for parliamentary elections to vote for 300 members of the National Assembly.

The elections, which began from 6:00 am local time, were scheduled to last for 12 hours at 14,259 polling stations across the Asian country, according to the National Election Commission.

Of about 44.28 million eligible voters, some 30.34 million will be allowed to cast their ballots in the main vote after last week's early voting.

The turnout of early voting, held last Friday and Saturday, hit a record high of 31.28 percent.

It was higher than 26.69 percent tallied in the previous 2020 parliamentary elections and marked the highest turnout for any parliamentary elections since the early voting was first adopted in the 2014 local elections for the nationwide election.

The turnout of overseas voting, which continued for six days through April 1 among domestic voters staying abroad, reached a new high of 62.8 percent. The overseas voting was introduced in 2012.

According to the Gallup Korea survey commissioned by the NEC, 78.9 percent replied that they will go to the polls "without fail".

It was almost unchanged compared to 79.0 percent for the parliamentary elections four years ago.