Assembly Passes Bill on Dormant Bank Accounts
By Kim Sue-young
Staff Reporter
The National Assembly Monday approved a bill to support delinquents with dormant bank accounts.
Under the bill, the government can establish a foundation to help delinquents and low-income families with money in bank accounts that have not been transacted for a long time.
In a plenary session, the Assembly also endorsed a bill to provide money to surviving families of men and women mobilized abroad for forced labor during the Japanese colonial rule of Korea between 1910 and 1945.
In addition, the Assembly passed about 40 other bills, including a revision bill on the Medical Law, which makes it mandatory for doctors to answer pharmacists' questions on prescriptions.
The Assembly, however, delayed passage of thorny issues such as a revision on the Private School Law to boost transparency in school management.
The pro-government Uri Party and the main opposition Grand National Party (GNP) had differed over the revision, especially about who can be included in schools' board of directors.
Last week, the two parties agreed that a quarter of a board of directors be filled with outside people recommended by school managers and the existing board of directors.
The Assembly failed to act on a bill to introduce the U.S. style law schools because the GNP refused to deal with it during the session insisting it needs more changes.
The bill allows universities to build law schools and graduates from those schools can take a state-run bar exam.
The legislature has yet to bring up the revision on pension reform that requires employees to pay the same amount of pension contributions while receiving less than before.
The Uri Party and the GNP agreed to pass the three issues last week and they are pending in parliamentary committees.
The Assembly will deal with the bills in a plenary session Tuesday after related committees endorse them, sources at the Assembly secretariat said.