Two highly contested bills have been passed this week with the backing of the ruling party despite back-to-back filibusters and concerns among civic groups, but trouble at the National Assembly appears likely to continue throughout the remaining days of the year.
Among the pending bills pushed ahead by the ruling Democratic Party of Korea’s leadership is a revision of the Criminal Act to impose criminal punishments on judges, prosecutors and police who wrongly interpret South Korean law when charging someone with a crime and rendering a guilty verdict.
The bill is in line with the ruling bloc’s past accusations that prosecutors have abused their power to cover up lawbreaking and manipulated evidence. The ruling party has condemned Supreme Court Chief Justice Jo Hee-de for leading a top court ruling in May that found the then-presidential candidate Lee Jae Myung guilty of making false claims just a month before the presidential election in June, which Lee won.
Also, the party’s lawmakers have floated a revision of the Court Organization Act to increase the number of Supreme Court justices from 14 to restore public trust in the court, and a revision of the Constitutional Court Act to enable South Korean citizens to file constitutional complaints with the Constitutional Court over rulings by the Supreme Court as a measure to protect people from rights violations by the top court.
These three bills are currently under committee review at the National Assembly.
According to Democratic Party Floor Leader Rep. Kim Byung-kee on Dec. 18, these bills aimed at judicial reform will be tabled at the National Assembly plenary session, and the party will be able to pass them before the Lunar New Year holiday in mid-February.
In October, Democratic Party chair Rep. Jung Chung-rae expressed his intention to lead such moves, only to face backlash.
The main opposition People Power Party has warned that such bills could sabotage the separation of powers that upholds South Korea’s tripartite system of legislative, executive and judicial branches.
Criticism has also emerged from within the liberal bloc. Lee Seok-yeon, who leads a consultative body for President Lee Jae Myung dedicated to national cohesion, told reporters on Dec. 11 after his meeting with Jung that he had asked Jung to reconsider the revision of the Criminal Act that would punish officials for wrongly interpreting the law.
Regardless, the Democratic Party has the legislative power to pass most of the bills, holding 166 parliamentary seats out of 298 in the National Assembly.
Combined with seats held by other left-wing minority parties, the parties would have the three-fifths of parliamentary seats required to halt a filibuster 24 hours after it is initiated.
These conditions have allowed the ruling party to unilaterally pass bills without necessarily seeking a consensus.
The passage on Wednesday of a revision to the Information and Communications Network Act, which could impose punitive damages on media outlets of up to five times the amount of damages caused by their spreading of fake news online, sparked calls for President Lee to veto it.
The left-wing civic group People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy said in a statement Wednesday that Lee should veto the bill, which it called anti-constitutional, given that the bill would give the government the authority to determine whether certain information is deemed fake and whether to approve its circulation. The same organization on Sunday urged the National Assembly to ditch the revision.
This was in sync with the People Power Party senior floor spokesperson Rep. Choi Eun-seok’s statement Thursday that the Democratic Party rammed through the bill Wednesday although it contains “anti-democratic elements,” including arbitrariness.
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