The National Assembly Cancels FTA Ratification Again

The National Assembly planned to hold a plenary session on January 8 to execute a secret ballot on the Korea-Chile Free Trade Agreement (FTA) ratification agreement agenda. However, the plan was cancelled as 40 members from peasant stock overran the Assembly refusing the agenda.

Chairman Park Kwan-yong, as the members of farming origins interfered with the progress of the proceedings and as they refused to participate in the voting, announced that, “We will not deal with the ratification today supposing that it will be handled in the February 9 main session of the special session of the Assembly.” He went on to say, “The government has to convince the agricultural district for the next month or so on the ratification.”

Chairman Park added, “If in the February 9 session the members still use physical force to prevent voting, we will enforce the right with guards.”

Before this, President Roh visited the National Assembly in the morning and asked Chairman Park and three other party representatives to cooperate in settling the ratification of FTA.

President Roh stated, “The FTA is not for the parties” and continued to say, “Farmer members must be in a plight, however, if the agenda gets ratified, the government will do its best to develop more policies and to stabilize the farming village.”

Roh added, “For what it is worth, the government [Minister of Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry] accepted all of the farmer origin member’s requests,” and he went on to say, “If today’s ratification agenda is well settled, I think the farmer groups will fold their resistance flag and succumb to a better situation.”

The opposition Grand National Party, Millennium Democratic Party, and Uri Party, after a delegate conference with President Roh, has each called a member meeting, which ended with the GNP and MDP choosing free vote and the Uri Party supporting the ratification as the party opinion.

On the other hand, yesterday’s plenary session settled the infant education bill and the infant education revised bill, which were criticized in the infant education and nurture industry.

With the ratification of infant education bill, beginning next year, the fee for private preschool construction, which hold infants from three years old to before school, and teacher’s pay, will be covered by the government and local autonomy groups. This results in decreasing the burden for parents.

Young-Chan Yoon yyc11@donga.com