Four years of partisan clashes leads to call for cut in number of lawmakers


A group of voters recently filed a complaint against Rep. Joo Sung-young of the ruling Saenuri Party on charges of neglecting his duties as head of a parliamentary subcommittee on revising the election law.

The subpanel, part of the National Assembly’s special committee on political reforms, has been dragging its feet on the work to rezone parliamentary constituencies ahead of the general elections set for April 11.

Despite the complaint, its members failed to reach a conclusion until last Thursday as requested by the National Election Commission. The indecision has left the election management body in an unprecedented situation, in which it has to start drawing up the electoral roll before the rezoning of constituencies is completed.

“This is the first time we have been put in this kind of trouble in the election history of our nation,” said an NEC official, blaming the parliamentary committee for neglecting its duty.

The election commission plans to begin making the list of voters later this month based on the constituencies for the previous parliamentary polls and then change it after the rezoning scheme is worked out.

Negotiators from the ruling party and the main opposition Democratic United Party reached a tentative deal last month to create three new electoral districts and reduce proportional representation seats by the corresponding number, according to sources familiar to the negotiation.

If finalized, the deal, which was not announced apparently for fear of public backlash, would have ignored the guideline set out by the Constitutional Court in 2001 that the size of the population in the most populous district should not exceed three times that of the least populous constituency’s. At that time, the court set the maximum and minimum population of a constituency at 310,406 and 103,469, respectively.

Under the initial rezoning plan, the populations in several districts would be more than three times as large as that of Namhae-Hadong in South Gyeongsang Province, the precinct with the least population, 104,342, as of the end of October.

The opposition party later put forward a proposal to create four new constituencies while abolishing four existing ones. Ruling party officials rejected the offer as politically calculated.

Of the four electoral districts that would be abolished, three are in the Saenuri’s stronghold of the southeastern Gyeongsang region and one in the DUP’s home turf of the southwestern Jeolla provinces.

Critics say the prolonged stalemate in the work to redraw the parliamentary districts results from the incumbent lawmakers looking out for their vested interests.

“It may be the problem to leave the rezoning task to the lawmakers themselves, who have much at stake in it,” said Choi Jung-ug, professor of political science at Konkuk University in Seoul.

Growing public discontent

Such criticism appears to be just the latest drop in a flood of public discontent with the performance of the 18th National Assembly, which is set to finish its four-year term on May 31.

Betraying their initial pledges to focus on enacting laws to enhance people’s livelihoods and settle differences through compromise, Assembly members have repeated physical clashes over highly charged issues over the past years.

Lawmakers from the rival parties engaged in a series of brawls on the floor of the parliamentary chamber over measures to approve budget plans, revise media laws and ratify the free trade agreement with the U.S.

Ruling party legislators have rammed through annual budget bills over objections from opposition members for four consecutive years since 2008.

In a culmination of the parliamentary chaos, an opposition lawmaker detonated a tear gas canister in front of the speaker’s seat last November in an attempt to block the approval of the U.S. trade deal.

Further damaging the crippled parliament, Speaker Park Hee-tae resigned last week amid a widening investigation into allegations he bribed fellow lawmakers in the ruling party’s leadership election in 2008, becoming the first legislative chief to step down in disgrace while in office.

In contrast to the long record of their physical confrontations, members of the current Assembly have performed poorly in dealing with legislation and implementing campaign pledges.

According to the parliamentary secretariat, nearly half of the 13,765 measures that have so far been submitted by lawmakers or the administration have yet to be handled. Some bills including one regulating the fiscal accounting of state-run universities have waited for deliberation for nearly four years since they were introduced shortly after the inauguration of the current Assembly in 2008.

Of the 6,590 pending bills, 6,170 were submitted by legislators and the remaining 420 by government agencies.

Lawmakers also have neglected to follow through with their campaign pledges.

According to data recently revealed by the Korea Manifesto Center, a nonprofit organization launched in 2006 to make politicians more responsible for their words, only a third of promises the lawmakers made during the 2008 campaign have been implemented.

“With so many unfinished pledges, the 18th Assembly should be given a failing grade,” said Lee Kwang-jae, secretary general of the center.

Public anger with the inefficient parliament has been amplified by a growing amount of expenditure for lawmakers.

The legislators passed measures last year to increase their monthly salary by 5.1 percent to 10.36 million won ($9,220) and create family allowances ― 40,000 won per month for a spouse and 20,000 won for each child under 20.

Those who have once served as an Assembly member are entitled to receive 1.2 million won in monthly pension until death after turning 65.

The number of fulltime staff for each lawmaker was increased to seven in 2010 from the previous six, with their combined annual salaries funded by state coffers amounting to about 380 million won.

More than 500 million won in taxpayers’ money is spent a year to pay for each legislator and operate his or her office, excluding some 200 benefits and about 300 billion won needed to conduct the quadrennial parliamentary elections.

Proper numbers

The growing public grievances with the inefficient and costly legislature have led to calls for cutting the number of lawmakers.

Ye Byung-il, CEO of Plutomedia, a social network service company, recently proposed on Twitter to slash the number of National Assembly seats from the current 299 to 100. His proposal drew enthusiastic support from other Twitter users.

“Most people around me have really supported the idea, showing deep distrust in parliamentary politics,” said Ye.

If the proposal sounds too drastic, he said, it may be a realistic goal to reduce the number to around 200.

“We can start with a 10 percent reduction,” Ye said, adding the development of social networks is enabling fewer representatives to collect a wider range of public opinion in a more efficient manner.

The move has been further fueled by recent reports that Japan’s ruling Democratic Party is pushing to decrease the number of members in the Diet’s lower house to 395 from the current 480 in addition to deciding to cut their salary by at least 8 percent.

Those advocating the reduction in the number of Assembly seats note that Korea, which has a unicameral legislature, has a higher ratio of lawmakers to population than the U.S., Japan and some major developing countries including Brazil and Mexico, all of which have a bicameral parliament.

A lawmaker represents about 162,000 voters in Korea, compared to 579,000 in the U.S., 319,000 in Brazil, 238,000 in Mexico and 180,000 in Japan.

“I feel so embarrassed with the voices demanding a cut in the number of legislators,” said Rep. Kim Dong-sung, a first-term lawmaker of the Saenuri Party.

“In my opinion, the number of lawmakers in Korea cannot be considered too high, especially compared with most European countries,” he said. “But I think all of my colleagues should keep in mind our failure to meet public expectations has resulted in such demands.”

Though given little notice by the public, some scholars have suggested the number of lawmakers should be increased if the parliament is to function properly to reflect diversifying interests in society, noting the average number of voters represented by a legislator in OECD member states remains at about 98,000.

Park Myung-rim, professor of political science at Yonsei University, said the parliament will need more members representing less privileged and minority groups such as women, workers, farmers and jobless youth to resolve increasingly complex problems facing Korean society.

The professor said an expanded parliament is also required to check the growing power of big businesses and large media outlets, which have exercised dominant influence over the economy and the process of opinion forming in the country. A larger legislature will also help put under tighter watch abuse of power and corruption among government agencies and financial institutions.

The professor, however, noted the expansion of the parliament should be accompanied by the improvement of its operation, such as holding sessions throughout the year, and abolishment of trappings for lawmakers.

Objective process

Many experts argue what may be more important is not whether to change the number of lawmakers but how to restore pubic trust in the legislature and improve its efficiency.

Choi, the Konkuk University professor, said he believes it will be acceptable to keep the whole number of lawmakers at the current level but some of the 245 districts should be merged or abolished to increase proportional representation seats whose number is set at 54.

Election officials indicate the legitimate population deviation between the most and least populous constituencies should be narrowed from the current 3 to 1 to possibly 2 to 1, which would result in reducing the number of lawmakers chosen from districts.

In its 2001 ruling, the Constitutional Court also suggested that the electoral districts should be eventually redrawn so that the population of the most populous precinct will not exceed twice that of the least populous one in order to guarantee each voter exercise more equal voting rights.

Advanced democracies have stricter limits on the deviation of populations among legislative constituencies. Each electoral district of the U.S. House of Representatives is supposed to have an even population in principle. Japan and Germany limit the deviation to 2 to 1 and 1.3 to 1, respectively.

Many experts stress the need to transfer the rezoning work from the hands of lawmakers to an objective body in which civilian representatives are allowed to participate.

“The system should be changed to permit an organization free of political interests to work out a scheme to redraw the constituencies and force the parliament to approve it,” said Choi.

Rep. Kim echoed the view.

“I admit there is an urgent need for a mechanism to make the rezoning process more autonomous,” he said. “It is simply nonsense that some candidates and voters still don’t know about the exact boundaries of their districts with less than two months to go before the elections.”

By Kim Kyung-ho (khkim@heraldcorp.com)