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By Chung Min-uck The National Assembly approved the long-stalled free trade deal with the United States during a plenary session Tuesday. The ruling Grand National Party (GNP) railroaded the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement (KORUS FTA) with support from 151 lawmakers in the session with an attendance of 170. Seven lawmakers voted against the bill, while 12 abstained. The Assembly also approved 14 related bills, which needed to be ratified for the effectuation of the trade pact. Extreme confrontation is now expected on the political landscape, as opposition parties fiercely resisting ratification have now declared an all out struggle against the ruling party and President Lee Myung-bak. “We will start a campaign for the nullification of the KORUS FTA,”said Rep. Sohn Hak-kyu, chairman of the main opposition Democratic Party (DP), right after the plenary session ended. With the passage of the trade deal and related bills through the Assembly, the Korean and U.S. governments are scheduled to exchange letters to confirm when the trade pact will go into effect. If there is no fixed date in the letters, the trade pact will become valid after 60 days. “We will try our best to ensure the KORUS FTA takes effect on Jan. 1, 2011 as scheduled,”said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in a statement. GNP lawmakers occupied the National Assembly’s main hall in order to ram through the free trade deal amid vehement protests from the opposition. Around 130 GNP lawmakers moved to the main hall right after ending a general meeting around 3:30 p.m. Assembly speaker Park Hee-tae soon requested the lawmakers to complete their reviews on the trade bill by 4 p.m., using his authority to forward the bill straight to a vote on the floor. Hearing the GNP’s attempt to railroad the bill, over 40 members of the opposition parties came to the main hall to physically block the passage of the bill. While engaging in a physical scuffle, Rep. Kim Sun-dong, a member of the minor opposition Democratic Labor Party, set off a tear gas canister in the main hall. He was taken away by parliamentary security. In the Assembly, the ruling party has a comfortable majority of 169 out of 295 seats which would have allowed it to unilaterally ratify the bill, but it had been unable to push for the ratification as opposition party members occupied the foreign affairs and trade committee room. Assembly speaker Park, who had supported holding bipartisan talks at the standing committee, recently changed his position after the DP refused President Lee Myung-bak’s compromise of seeking negotiations on the investor-state dispute (ISD) settlement clause after the deal was ratified. The GNP and the opposition parties have been in conflict over the ISD clause which the oppositions claim would let American companies bypass domestic policies by bringing cases to international courts. Many moderate GNP lawmakers who had been seeking a compromise with the opposition parties also turned their back after seeing the DP’s response. Swift ratification of the KORUS FTA by the U.S. Congress in early October prompted the government and the GNP to follow suit. But they failed due to fierce objections from lawmakers from the opposition parties who called for implementation of preventive measures and the removal of the so-called poisonous clauses that could negatively affect domestic industries after the pact takes effect. Since then the Assembly had been locked in an impasse due to the partisan battle including minor physical confrontations. The agreement was originally signed in 2007 and amended last December at the request of Washington.
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| muchung@koreatimes.co.k |
