National Assembly normalized at night

The National Assembly plenary session, which had been crippled over the provocative remarks of Rep. Kim Yong-Kap of the opposition Grand National Party, was normalized at about at 10:20 p.m. Wednesday.

During the session convened Wednesday night, members of the ruling and opposition parties received a report on the impeachment motions against Prosecutor General Park Soon-Yong and Deputy Prosecutor General Shin Seung-Nam and conducted interpellation on economic affairs until midnight. A total of 11 lawmakers from the ruling Millennium Democratic Party and the GNP took the rostrum for questioning, five minutes for each one due to time constraints.

Assembly Speaker Lee Man-Sup announced at the session that the Assembly had deleted Rep. Kim's remarks from the parliamentary minutes.

The rival parties, through contacts between their floor leaders, agreed to resolve the Kim case at about 5 p.m. and continue the parliamentary session, but the plenary session was delayed until late at night, as the ruling MDP submitted a disciplinary motion against the GNP lawmaker Kim and the GNP raised objection to it.

MDP floor leader Chung Kyun-Hwan and his GNP counterpart Chung Chang-Hwa met and agreed not to submit the disciplinary motion to either the plenary session or the Assembly Ethics Committee, paving the way for the parliamentary normalization.

Earlier in the day, the ruling and opposition parties agree to resolve the dispute over the GNP lawmaker's controversial statement in the formula that the Assembly speaker is delegated to strike out Rep. Kim's remarks from the parliamentary record and that the GNP whip expresses a public apology for the Kim incident.

Following the bipartisan accord, GNP floor leader Chung said in a statement that the GNP expresses regret over the parliamentary paralysis stemming from his statement on the floor, at a time when a heap of bills related to the people's livelihoods are pending and the nation¡¯s economic plight is persisting.

Yoon Seung-Mo ysmo@donga.com