Two lawmakers elected through the United Progressive Party’s proportional representation list will have to resign on their own if they wish to avoid the humiliation of being expelled from the National Assembly. Both the ruling Saenuri Party and the opposition Democratic United Party are already moving to force them out of the National Assembly.
At issue are the ideology that Rep. Lee Seog-gi and Rep. Kim Jae-yeon of the divided leftist party are alleged to espouse and the process of putting them on the party’s list of proportional representative candidates. But the ruling and opposition parties are taking issue with the selection process only, as they should.
This is not to say that their alleged ideological allegiance to the North Korean communists, the archenemy of South Korea, is less serious than their selection as candidates, which the United Progressive Party acknowledged as fraudulent. On the contrary, there is no ruling out the possibility of the lawmakers acting at the expense of South Korea.
Given the constitutional right to freedom of thought and conscience, however, no legal action can be taken against someone simply because he has embraced North Korea’s “juche” ideology. No person is liable to punishment unless proven guilty.
Since the April 11 parliamentary elections, the ruling party has been demanding that Lee and Kim must not be allowed to keep their seats in the National Assembly. But the move to force them out gained momentum when Rep. Park Jie-won, floor leader of the Democratic Party, recently referred to the possibility of calling the parliamentary Ethics Committee into session to review their eligibility as a first step toward expelling them.
Bipartisanship is needed to disqualify an errant lawmaker, given that a decision in this regard requires approval from 200 or more members of the 300-seat National Assembly. The Saenuri Party, which won 152 seats in the April elections, has to rely on the Democratic United Party with 127 seats to expel Lee and Kim, two of the 13 lawmakers affiliated with the United Progressive Party.
With consent from the main opposition party, the ruling party promises to launch the process of expelling the lawmakers as soon as the new National Assembly starts its operations. But caution is advised.
A hasty decision by the committee to expel the lawmakers would have the risk of triggering a protracted legal conflict. It would not be too late to act when the court makes a final decision on the selection process, into which the prosecutors’ office has recently launched an investigation.
Rep. Park claimed that the process of expulsion can be launched because the United Progressive Party admitted fraud in the selection of its proportional candidates. Indeed, the new leadership of the party said that a pro-Pyongyang faction, which had the party under its control, resorted to illegal means ― proxy and multiple voting ― to put Lee, Kim and others at the top of the candidate list.
The leftist party is in the process of ousting the two lawmakers from the party because they have been defying an order to abandon their parliamentary seats. But the process is being stymied by the resistance of the pro-Pyongyang faction. Moreover, expulsion from the party does not mean expulsion from the National Assembly.
What is more important at the moment is denying pro-Pyongyang lawmakers access to classified information. It is not just Lee and Kim but several other lawmakers affiliated with the leftist party that are accused of being subservient to the North Korean communists. Some of them reportedly wish to sit on the committee on foreign affairs or the one on national defense.
The leftist party is denied the right to assign its lawmakers to the standing committees in the way it sees fit as it does not have the minimum of 20 lawmakers needed to form a negotiating group in the National Assembly. The job is left to the speaker, who will soon be elected.
To the relief of the administration, both candidates for election to the post of speaker promise not to assign the suspect lawmakers to the foreign, defense or other committees dealing with classified information. But it is not just at those committees that classified information can be obtained. Greater vigilance is needed.
