The National Assembly hit yet another reef on Monday with the Democratic Party boycotting all procedures other than the confirmation hearings of three minister-level nominees as a means to add weight to its calls for a special counsel investigation.
Since last week, the DP has been calling for a special counsel investigation into the alleged election meddling by the National Intelligence Service.
“I hope the president will clarify her position on the DP’s suggestion of leaving all election-related issues to the special counsel and NIS-reform issues to the special reform committee,” DP chairman Rep. Kim Han-gil said at the party’s leadership meeting on Monday.
The move comes a day ahead of the launch of a pan-progressive alliance against government organizations’ election interference, which the DP hopes to use as a tool to raise the pressure on the government over related issues. The alliance, which includes the DP and Progressive Justice Party as well as religious and nongovernmental groups, will orchestrate related efforts outside the parliament.
Although Kim met with his Saenuri Party counterpart Rep. Hwang Woo-yea later in the day, observers say that little change in ruling-opposition party relations can be expected in the near future.
Although the prosecutors’ office has been conducting a probe into the allegations against the NIS, the issue has only expanded with the investigation’s former chief claiming political pressure originating from Minister of Justice Hwang Kyo-ahn. The chief of the prosecution office in Yeoju, Gyeonggi Province, Yoon Seok-yeol, who had headed the investigation, claimed that his superiors hampered his progress.
The Supreme Prosecutors’ Office has since requested the Justice Ministry to suspend Yoon for three months, prompting the DP to accuse the prosecution of siding with those in power.
The ruling party, for its part, accused the DP of political scheming.
“The DP, which has sensed the legal and moral wrongness of the deletion of records and the outcome of the investigation, is staging a political strike designed to protect the pro-Roh (faction),” Saenuri Party deputy floor leader Rep. Yoon Sang-hyun said on Monday, referring to the probe into the developments regarding the 2007 inter-Korean summit transcript.
The transcript, in which late President Roh Moo-hyun allegedly denied the validity of the Northern Limit Line in the West Sea, has been found to be missing at the National Archives, on which the ruling party honed in on to press the DP and its pro-Roh Moo-hyun faction.
Yoon also said that the DP’s actions were “without justification and conscience,” saying that the main opposition was “holding hostage issues of state and the people’s livelihood.”
As ruling-opposition party relations deteriorated further, the confirmation hearings got off to a rocky start with the hearing for Hwang Chan-hyun being delayed over DP lawmakers’ claims that some information had been omitted.
Along with Hwang, the nominee for Board of Audit and Inspection chief, Moon Hyung-pyo and Kim Jin-tae will also be grilled by lawmakers until Wednesday. Moon has been nominated to head the Ministry of Health and Welfare, while Kim is the prosecutor-general nominee.
koreaherald@heraldcorp.com
