Voter turnout for South Korea's presidential election reached 16 percent as of 11 a.m. Wednesday, according to the country's election authorities.

Out of the total 44.2 million eligible voters nationwide, 7 million had cast their ballots at 14,464 polling stations, five hours after the start of voting, the National Election Commission (NEC) said.

The turnout was lower than 19.4 percent reported at the same time in the previous presidential election in 2017.

The provisional tally does not include the results of the two-day early voting last week.

More than 16 million, or 36.9 percent of the registered voters, already cast their ballots in the early voting Friday and Saturday, which will be counted together starting with the voting rate to be released after 1 p.m. (Yonhap)