By Seo Dong-shin
Staff Reporter


Police officers search a corridor of the Korean Train Express (KTX) with a search mirror and a sniffer dog for a possible terror attack at Kwangju Station, Thursday. /Yonhap

Lawmakers of the main opposition Grand National Party (GNP) are now calling for swift anti-terror legislation, citing growing security concerns after last week’s terrorist bombing in London shocked the world.
``We have to take the situation seriously. The nation could be the next target of an international terrorist group because of the troop dispatch to Iraq,’’ Rep. Suh Byung-soo, a policy coordinator of the GNP, said. ``An anti-terror system must be introduced urgently to cope with terrorist threats.’’

Rep. Chung Hyung-keun of the GNP, former senior official of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), also wrote on his Web site Tuesday that South Korea needs to be put on the highest alert for security, especially during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit scheduled for November in Pusan.

``Among the 21 heads of state to gather at the summit meeting, four of them _ the U.S., Japan, Australia and South Korea _ have dispatched relatively large-numbers of troops to Iraq and chances are high the event will become the target of Al-Qaida,’’ the Pusan-based lawmaker wrote.

Chung called on the political circles to reach an agreement to speed up legislation of an anti-terror act that has been put on hold at the National Assembly for almost four years. The first act, which was submitted briefly after the Sept. 11 attack in the U.S., was discarded due to opposition from civic groups.

Rep. Gong Sung-jin of the GNP submitted a new anti-terror bill last March. Although the ruling Uri Party has yet to clarify its stance on the bill, it has started to operate its own taskforce to find possible measures to prevent terrorist attacks in the country. Rep. Cho Seong-tae, former defense minister, leads the team.

But some ruling party lawmakers and the progressive Democratic Labor Party (DLP) as well as an alliance of some 100 civic groups have opposed the act, worrying that it might result in the infringement of human rights.

The proposed act aims at establishing an anti-terror center under the NIS. The center would be empowered to summon and question suspected terrorists and collect personal data such as records of travel, telecommunications and financial transactions.

In addition, the center will be entitled to request that the government check suspects at the borders, for example by enabling bans on entry into or departure from the nation. It can also suggest the president provide military assistance, according to the act.

Hong Seung-ha, spokesman of the DLP, said that the act, once passed in the Assembly, would be a ``sibling law’’ to the anti-communist National Security Law, which has often been abused by previous authoritarian governments to control dissidents.

``If politicians really care about the security of our people, we must not waste our time on a debate regarding the anti-terror act. We had better start a serious discussion on the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq immediately,’’ Hong said in a statement.

But given the growing concerns on security issues among the public and the government’s pledges to pursue the development of an anti-terror system, it is also likely that the act will pass the legislature as early as September. President Roh Moo-hyun and Defense Minister Yoon Kwang-ung have also rebuffed the possibility of early troop withdrawal from Iraq.

The move to introduce the much-debated anti-terror act had gained momentum in the last year, when South Korean national Kim Sun-il was beheaded by an insurgent group in Iraq. The group murdered him in retaliation for South Korea’s troop dispatch to the war-torn country.

South Korea comes third in the number of troops stationed in Iraq, following the U.S. and Britain. The 3,200 troops, named the ``Zaytun Unit,’’ focus on peacekeeping and reconstruction and are stationed in Irbil, a Kurdish-controlled northern Iraqi town.

Nevertheless, some Islamic Web sites and terrorist groups have sent messages threatening to retaliate against South Koreans again unless the troops are withdrawn.

saltwall@koreatimes.co.kr