South Korea's rival parties are gearing up to pass bills aimed at helping improve human rights conditions in North Korea, sources said Friday, amid growing international pressure on Pyongyang over the issue.
Those bills have been pending at the National Assembly for years due to wrangling between the ruling Saenuri Party and the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD).
In line with a recent bipartisan agreement, the bills will be presented Monday to a parliamentary foreign affairs committee meeting for approval, said a lawmaker who is a member of the committee.
Under the agreement, they will push to pass the North Korean human rights bills through the National Assembly by the end of this year, the lawmaker noted.
"Taking the adoption of a U.N. resolution as an opportunity, (the parties) agreed to push for the local enactment of a North Korean human rights law," an informed source said. "With this agreement, (we) would be able to enact the law within this year."
The quickening parliamentary moves come after a U.N. committee passed an unusually strong resolution on North Korea's dismal human right situations earlier in the week, calling for the referral of the situation to the International Criminal Court.
Separately, the Saenuri Party said it plans to come up with an integrated version of five related bills proposed by party members that would call for efforts to document North Korea's rights violations and set up a national plan to improve human rights conditions in the North.
Despite the ruling party's push to pass the bills, the main opposition party remained cautious.
"The timing of the passage can be predicted only after reviewing Saenuri Party-proposed bills," said Rep. Sim Jae-kwon, an NPAD member of the foreign affairs committee.
He indicated NPAD may oppose the Saenuri bill if it includes assistance to activist groups that are involved in a campaign to fly anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border, which have been blamed for adding fuel to inter-Korean tensions. (Yonhap)
