By Lee Jin-woo
Staff Reporter


Park Geun-hye


The largest opposition Grand National Party’s drive to thwart the controversial revision of the private school law has faced an unexpected hurdle, the recent heavy snowfall in the nation’s southwestern region.
With the first one held in Myong-dong, downtown Seoul on Dec. 13, the conservative GNP has ambitiously staged massive street rallies in Seoul and its political stronghold of Pusan to protest the revision. The revised law requires private schools to appoint a quarter of their seven-member board of directors from among nominee teachers and parents.

The deadlock has paralyzed the extraordinary session of the Assembly with several pressing issues including bills on next year’s budget spending and anti-real estate speculation measures since the very first day of the session on Dec. 12.

Despite the GNP’s claim that the private school reform measure is feared to ruin children’s education by radical left-wing unionized teachers, the government and the ruling party have urged the GNP to return to the Assembly to come up with recovery measures for snow-hit regions especially the Cholla provinces. A record-breaking snowfall has wreaked havoc in the region, closing schools, destroying farm facilities and blocking most transportation systems.

After the party’s general meeting of legislators yesterday, GNP legislators ended the occupation of the office of Assembly Speaker Kim Won-ki, which has paralyzed Kim’s official duties in the last 12 days.

Rep. Kang Jae-sup, floor leader of the GNP, however, reaffirmed the party’s strong determination to continue protests against the revision, saying ``Although we sacrifice handling some minor bills, we’ve got to constantly push forward with our anti-private school reform drive.’’

In a radio interview, GNP spokesman Lee Ke-jin said ``The ruling party should at least promise to revise the law once again in the next regular Assembly session by the end of February. Otherwise, we won’t cooperate with the ruling camp.’’

Rep. Chung Sye-kyun, the interim chairman of the ruling party, continued urging the GNP to return to the Assembly to tackle pending issues.

``If the GNP continues rejecting our requests to return to the Assembly, we’ll have to cooperate with other opposition parties,’’ said the chairman.

The ruling party has officially requested Assembly speaker Kim to hold a three-day plenary session beginning next Wednesday.

``The GNP should take the recent heavy snowfalls as an order from heaven to resume their duties at the Assembly,’’ said Rep. Won Hye-young, chief policy maker of the governing party.

Earlier this week, floor leaders of four parties, excluding the GNP, had an emergency meeting at the Assembly, agreeing to convene some Assembly panels closely related to the recovery work as soon as possible. But the three opposition parties decided to wait and see whether the ruling party can make a compromise with the GNP until they meet again this weekend.

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