Hardline conduct of the annual parliamentary audit of government agencies is continuing in National Assembly standing committees chaired by the Democratic Party of Korea, with opposition lawmakers stripped of speaking rights and one barred from an audit altogether. The People Power Party pushed back strongly, saying the ruling party is using the chair's authority over proceedings and its majority of seats to take away even the opposition's power to conduct audits.
Political sources said on the 14th that the National Assembly Science, ICT, Broadcasting and Communications Committee convened a full session the previous day, in the middle of an audit covering the Korea Communications Commission and other agencies, and voted to bar Rep. Lee Jin-sook of the People Power Party from the proceedings. People Power Party members did not take part in the vote, and all 12 lawmakers from the ruling bloc who did vote were in favor.
The ruling bloc argued that it posed a potential conflict of interest for Lee to directly audit matters she had decided and work she had carried out while serving as chair of the Korea Communications Commission. Rep. Song Ki-heon of the Democratic Party, who chairs the committee, also said much of Lee's questioning related to matters from her own tenure as commission chair and asked her to recuse herself. When Lee refused, saying she had no intention of recusing herself, the committee changed its agenda to table and pass the motion.
Lee objected that she could not be blocked from the audit merely because she is a former communications commission chair. She said her actual time in the post amounted to only three to four months because she was suspended from duty following her impeachment, and that she has both the right and the duty to question officials on behalf of the public about matters she was not involved in. Calling the forced exclusion an abuse of the majority, Lee said barring a member by a vote simply because one side has the numbers amounts to majority tyranny and a Democratic Party dictatorship. The People Power Party also countered that there were no grounds for the motion, saying a determination had already been made, when Lee was assigned to the committee, that no conflict of interest existed.
People Power Party members of the committee held a news conference immediately after the vote, criticizing the decision as stripping a lawmaker of the right to conduct a parliamentary audit, and said they would petition the Constitutional Court over the dispute. Choi Hyung-doo, the committee liaison for the opposition, said Lee's right to take part in the audit and to speak cannot be blocked, and that if it is, the party will regard it as a more serious infringement of authority and respond accordingly. He stressed that the party would keep fighting and that the audit would continue without interruption.
The party leadership backed them up. Secretary-General Chung Hee-yong said at an audit strategy meeting at the National Assembly that day that the move was a political ploy to silence the opposition by forcing a contrived conflict-of-interest framing on it, as the opposition tries to dig into truths inconvenient for the Lee Jae-myung administration and the Democratic Party. He noted pointedly that in the committee's 2024 audit, Kim Hyun, then the Democratic Party's committee liaison, was not subject to exclusion or recusal even though she had served three years at the communications commission as a standing commissioner and vice chair.
Earlier, on the 6th, during the Legislation and Judiciary Committee's audit of the Supreme Court, Chair Seo Young-kyo of the Democratic Party suspended the speaking rights of Rep. Park Hyung-soo, the opposition's committee liaison, and Rep. Kim Tae-gyu, both of the People Power Party, one after the other.
The suspensions in the judiciary committee came amid a verbal clash between the rival parties on the first day of the audit. When Kim, during questioning by Rep. Son Sol of the Progressive Party, said the committee should come up with a "truth about Owl Rock," ruling party members objected in unison that he was mocking the late President Roh Moo-hyun. Seo then suspended Kim's speaking rights. Later the same day, Seo told Park, who was protesting her handling of the proceedings, that he was acting like a gangster. Park shot back by calling her a female thug, after which his speaking rights were also suspended.
The opposition demanded an apology at the Ministry of Justice audit two days later. On the 8th, Park said something that could never happen in constitutional history had occurred again, pointing out that Seo had suspended the speaking rights of two opposition lawmakers in a single day. His point was that restricting speaking rights blocks the very role of lawmakers in scrutinizing the government on behalf of the public.
Opposition members also argued that the treatment was inconsistent with how ruling party lawmakers were handled. Rep. Kwak Kyu-taek of the People Power Party said the confrontation in the National Assembly began with the judiciary committee chair's indiscriminate suspensions of speaking rights, and asked how lawmakers from rival parties sparring and arguing with each other could possibly disrupt order, when order is invoked as the reason. He demanded that Seo halt arguments involving ruling and opposition lawmakers alike before suspending anyone's speaking rights. Kim likewise raised the fairness issue, saying no penalties were imposed on ruling party lawmakers who shouted. He criticized the chair, saying many Democratic Party members had also raised their voices at the time, and that demanding an apology after hearing only his remarks suggested her listening itself was biased.