The 8th popularly elected Ulsan City Council has been devoted to legislative activities for regional development, processing 1,183 agenda items over the past four years. In particular, under Mayor Kim Doo-gyeom's regime, Ulsan achieved significant achievements such as attracting 36 trillion won worth of investment, opening the era of 1 trillion won common allocation tax, and registering Bangucheon petroglyphs as World Heritage sites, seeking to make a leap from a manufacturing-centered city to a future industrial city. However, despite these achievements, the long-term legal dispute and infighting surrounding the election of the chairman in the second half of the year remained a painful stain that disappointed citizens. The launch of the 9th National Assembly, in which 12 of the 22 city council members will be replaced, poses the enormous task of how to put past conflicts behind us and restore trust as a new citizen representative body.

Mayor Kim Doo-gyeom, who is concluding his term, emphasized in his retirement address that policies for Ulsan's future should be inherited without wavering, regardless of political faction. The pro-business policies and securing future growth engines that he focused on have become the foundation for Ulsan's sustainable development, and this is expected to remain a key task in the next city administration. However, strong questions about the election management system raised during his retirement caused a big stir in local politics. In particular, the strong stance he expressed regarding the ballot paper shortage that occurred during the local elections went beyond a simple administrative error, and was an incident that directly revealed his distrust toward the current government and the National Election Commission.

The ballot paper shortage issue raised by Mayor Kim has spread into a controversy over suffrage violations that occurred at 91 polling places across the country. He pointed out that this phenomenon was especially noticeable in conservative areas, and defined it as not a simple shortage of supplies, but systematic poor election management or intentional obstruction. Mayor Kim proposed an alternative of abolishing the early voting system and expanding the main voting day to two days, and strongly urged a government investigation and special prosecution to uncover the truth. These claims led to a request by the Youth Committee of the Ulsan City Party of the People Power Party to review the re-election, pushing the political battle over the fairness of the election to the extreme.

On the other hand, the Ulsan City Election Commission dismissed these claims as untrue and defined the nature of the situation differently. The National Election Commission explained that although there were some concerns about shortages during the distribution of ballots, the immediate additional supply did not cause actual voting to be interrupted or delayed. They appear to be wary of the situation developing into political suspicion, as the additional paper distributed was numerically less than the actual amount used. Ultimately, this controversy shows how large the gap between technical administrative errors and political interpretations is, and suggests how much more sophisticated communication and system improvement is needed for our society to ensure transparency in the election management system.