This combination of photos show Oh Se-hoon (right) and Chong Won-o. (Yonhap) Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon edged in front of his rival Chong Won-o in the vote count for the Seoul mayoral election shortly after 7 a.m. on Thursday morning, having been behind for all of the previous night.Oh of the main opposition People Power Party was ahead of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea’s Chong, 48.88 percent to 48.4 percent, with 97.43 percent of the votes counted as of 9:11 a.m. Polls released after voting closed had projected Chong to win by a margin of between 5.4 and 10.6 percentage points, a prediction that has long since been shattered.Neither party has claimed victory yet, as the number of Seoul voters and the percentage of remaining votes mean either candidate can still emerge as the winner.Chong had planned to release an official statement at 7:30 a.m., but canceled the plan when he was overtaken by Oh at 7:17 a.m.One of the closest elections in recent history was also marred by controversy, as voters at 14 polling stations across Seoul reported that they were unable to vote because election officials did not have enough ballots.Eight of the stations were in Songpa-gu, two in Gangnam-gu and two in Seocho-gu, areas that traditionally have shown strong support for Oh’s conservative bloc.With exit polls predicting Oh’s loss, the PPP strongly called for a suspension of vote counting and a reelection, but the National Election Commission dismissed the possibility. The election watchdog said a ballot shortage was not among the grounds for such actions under the Public Official Election Act.Angry voters held an all-night protest outside a polling station in Jamsil-dong, one of those that suffered a shortage of ballot papers. Some went to the NEC headquarters in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province, calling for a revote and demanding that NEC chief Roh Tae-ak step down from his post.It is possible that this year's mayoral election will become the closest race in history. The closest margin ever in an election for head of a province or city was in 2022, when DP's Kim Dong-yeon was elected Gyeonggi governor by beating out his rival Kim Eun-hye of the PPP by mere 0.15 percentage points — or 8,913 votes.The slimmest margin ever for a parliamentary election was in 2000, when two candidates lost by meager three votes.