With less than two weeks remaining until the closure of the current National Assembly, rival parties are making their eleventh-hour struggles to have contentious bills passed before a final plenary session slated for Thursday.

But the prospects of significant progress remain slim despite the lawmakers’ recent reiterations for bilateral cooperation over the bills. Nearly 10,000 pending bills are likely to be scrapped unless they manage to receive final parliamentary approval by May 29.

At the heart of the clash is the series of economic bills to relax regulations on the service industry and the labor market. While the ruling Saenuri Party has been touting these bills as key tools to revitalize the economy, the opposition bloc has denounced them as widening the social and economic gaps.

The Minjoo Party of Korea and the runner-up opposition People’s Party, for their part, have called for legislation to help toxic humidifier victims and to extract punitive damage compensations from the product manufacturing companies. The Saenuri Party has been reluctant to introduce the bill, though it did consent to a special parliamentary hearing on the issue.

Last week’s meeting between Cheong Wa Dae and the parliamentary whips reconfirmed the gap in opinions of the parties. The attendants, despite their consensus on the need to boost government-legislature communication, failed to make a breakthrough on the contentious bills.

“It was unfortunate that we haven’t seen any progress on sensitive bills,” said the Minjoo’s floor leader Rep. Woo Sang-ho after the meeting, highlighting that President Park Geun-hye dismissed the bill related to humidifier as “something that needs further parliamentary discussion.”

Even the “undisputed bills” remain pending amid the slowed pace of the outgoing assembly. Rep. Kim Do-eup of the Saenuri Party on Thursday said that some 120 undisputed bills would clear the Assembly. Until now, only 37 bills have been tabled for the plenary session.

What further impedes the passage of the bills is that the parliamentary committees have yet to schedule their meetings to deliberate on the bills. Last week, the committees dealing with Sewol and labor bills failed to make a breakthrough, after which they have not yet arranged another meeting.

The legislative impasse appeared to be exacerbated by the changed political landscape following the latest general election on April 13.

The opposition bloc, having earned a parliamentary majority, has been growing vocal over its key agendas.

But the Saenuri Party, which has been demoted as the No. 2 party, has been relatively slack over pending bills, preoccupied by its persisting factional strife and leadership selection dispute.

Yeo Jun-suk (jasonyeo@heraldcorp.com)