[Anchor]

The Democratic Party has unilaterally elected chairs for 11 parliamentary standing committees through a vote. Key positions, including the chairs of the Legislation and Judiciary Committee and the Public Administration and Security Committee, went to the Democratic Party. The People Power Party protested, calling it a display of arrogance and self-righteous politics, and declared that they would not cooperate moving forward.

Reporter Park Jae-yeon has the story.

[Reporter]

During the plenary session of the National Assembly last night (June 30), Democratic Party lawmakers were elected as chairs for 11 standing committees for the second half of the 22nd National Assembly.

Out of the total 18 standing committee chair positions, the Democratic Party pushed through the election for 11 of them unilaterally, excluding the remaining seven.

[Cho Jung-sik/National Assembly Speaker: We intend to open the second half of the National Assembly by first forming 11 standing committees and electing their chairs.]

Seo Young-kyo was elected chair of the Legislation and Judiciary Committee, Kim Young-jin as chair of the Public Administration and Security Committee, and Song Ki-hun as chair of the Science, ICT, Broadcasting, and Communications Committee.

The People Power Party, protesting the forced passage, held a picket demonstration inside the plenary session hall but did not participate in the vote.

[Please allow for bipartisan agreement!]

Floor leaders from both ruling and opposition parties met several times before the plenary session to negotiate, but they failed to narrow their differences over the position of the Legislation and Judiciary Committee chair.

The People Power Party protested that National Assembly Speaker Cho Jung-sik, who is from the Democratic Party, forcibly assigned their members to the 11 standing committees, and announced that all of them would resign from their committee posts.

[Chung Jeung-sik/People Power Party Floor Leader: Continue with your politics of arrogance and self-righteousness. We will not comply with a committee formation process that resembles handing out scraps.]

The Democratic Party maintains its position that it will grant the remaining seven standing committee chair positions to the People Power Party based on the ratio of parliamentary seats. However, they have warned that if the party continues to refuse to participate in the formation of the committees, they will take all seven remaining positions as well.

[Han Byung-do/Democratic Party Floor Leader: I hope you do not even think about hindering public livelihood and reform by paralyzing the National Assembly.]

Meanwhile, during yesterday's plenary session, the motion to appoint Han Seong-sook as Prime Minister was also passed under the leadership of the Democratic Party.

Video Editing: Jeon Min-kyu