Opposition Party Tries to Block Passage


By Ryu Jin
Staff Reporter
The ruling Uri Party and two minor oppositions, the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) and the Millennium Democratic Party (MDP), agreed Thursday to jointly submit a bill to abolish the National Security Law, the half-century-old anticommunist apparatus of the capitalist South Korea.

The three parties also agreed in principle to cooperate with each other to realize another legislation aimed at clearing up the country’s modern history related to pro-Japanese collaborators during the 1910-45 colonial rule, officials said.

``We share the basic principle of wanting to eliminate the National Security Law,’’ Rep. Lee Jong-kul of the Uri Party, standing along with his counterparts from the two small opposition parties, said in a press conference. ``We’ll closely consult with each other to abolish the law during the ongoing regular session of the National Assembly.’’

With the majority Uri Party joining forces with the two other minor parties, the move to scrap the controversial legislation will likely pick up pace, despite desperate opposition by the nation’s main opposition, the Grand National Party (GNP). With a majority of 151 seats, the Uri Party is quite confident it can pass the bill in the 299-strong unicameral legislature, in which the GNP has only 121 seats.

Dominated by staunch conservatives who show knee-jerk reactions to communist North Korea across the border, the GNP has vehemently opposed the abrogation of the draconian law while calling for an amendment instead.

Rep. Kim Yong-kap, an ultra-conservative from the GNP who has often declared his preparedness to lose everything to save the security law, collapsed earlier in the day for five minutes, while giving an impassioned speech at the Assembly against the move to terminate his prized law.

The law, enacted in 1948 and subsequently revised seven times, has long been a source of contention, often being used by iron-fisted regimes as a tool to crack down on pro-democracy activists and opposition figures. North Korea has long demanded the law be dropped as a prerequisite to improved relations with the South.

The GNP has said that the law should be amended, but a significant part of the Uri Party and liberal government bodies such as the National Human Rights Commission want it repealed entirely.

In a major setback for the Uri Party, however, the nation’s two most revered judiciary bodies _ the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court _ recently upheld the National Security Law and accused the Uri leadership of trying to strip the country of its last defensive measures against the communist North.

The two Koreas have remained foes for more than 50 years following the end of 1950-53 Korean War, as the civil war ended with an armistice agreement instead of a peace treaty.

International human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International (AI), have repeatedly advised the nation that it should get rid of the cruel law.

Rajiv Narayan, an East Asian team researcher of the London-based AI, called on South Korean politicians in a news conference in Seoul last week to ``repeal or make a fundamental review of the National Security Law and bring it into line with international standards.’’

jinryu@koreatimes.co.kr