The speaker of South Korea’s legislature on Friday proposed holding talks with his North Korean counterpart later this year at a time and place of the North’s choosing, saying that talking was “the only solution” to inter-Korean tensions in his annual Constitution Day speech.

National Assembly Speaker Rep. Chung Ui-hwa also urged lawmakers here to begin talks over constitutional reforms, without detailing what the reforms should be.

 

Chung’s words came amid a long-held debate over whether Seoul should transition to a parliamentary system that would limit the president’s clout over domestic politics. President Park Geun-hye later Friday stressed stability, repeating her objection to holding talks on constitutional revisions.

“There are two main halls in the National Assembly,” Chung said. “Our forefathers built two halls, with expectations that the legislature would become bicameral once we unified with the North,” the fifth-term lawmaker said. The South Korean Assembly is a unicameral 298-seat legislature.

“It is time we made (unification) a reality,” Chung said. “I officially propose to the North Korean Supreme People’s Assembly to convene a meeting between each legislature’s speakers,” Chung said. “Talks are the only solution.”

“I deem Aug. 15 to be the ideal date,” the speaker added, citing the date’s symbolic importance to both Koreas, as it marks the date that Imperial Japan’s 35-year occupation of the Korean Peninsula ended in 1945.

“But I will fully cooperate with a time and place of the North’s picking,” he concluded. “I am willing to meet the North anytime and anywhere.”

The speaker’s proposal came months after Chung initially suggested holding talks with North Korean lawmakers when he became Assembly speaker in May last year. Chung had said expressed dismay at the lack of talks with the North generated by the Park Geun-hye administration.

Chung also urged South Korean lawmakers to begin steps to reform the Constitution, although he did not say what the revisions should aim to do.

“We are at a crossroads of either falling into years of slow growth or creating a new era of big growth through innovation, at the crossroads of either of allowing the middle class to evaporate, or allowing it to grow.”

For this, the Constitution must be revised, Chung asserted, saying that the “1987 system” was no longer appropriate for the times.

The Constitution last underwent major revisions in 1987 when the last of South Korea’s military governments agreed to relinquish political power.

Multiple senior lawmakers have proposed beginning talks to revise the Constitution. The changes should aim to increase the Assembly’s say in domestic affairs, such as naming the prosecutor-general, or the prime minister, lawmakers including ruling Saenuri Party Rep. Lee Jae-oh and main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy Rep. Woo Yoon-keun have said.

Chung’s message also came amid a scandal involving the National Intelligence Service, the South Korean spy agency. Local reports earlier this week accused the NIS of wiretapping opposition officials in the runs up to the 2012 general and presidential elections.

President Park Geun-hye, who opposes the reforms, later Friday underscored the need for the legislature to quit partisan infighting.

By Jeong Hunny (hj257@heraldcorp.com)