Lotte chief may be summoned for Assembly audit

By Kim Hyo-jin

The floor leader of the ruling Saenuri Party indicated Tuesday that Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin may be summoned for the National Assembly audit sessions.

The Saenuri Party is now discussing with opposition parties when to hold the audit sessions, which are expected to take place in September or October.

“Chaebol owners must be present at the sessions,” Rep. Won Yoo-chul said during a party meeting. “We don’t have even the slightest intention to protect them.”

His remarks have raised speculation that the Assembly may call the Lotte chairman as a witness.

Shin has been engaged in a succession feud with his elder brother Dong-joo, which brought to light the firm’s opaque management structure.

The family feud triggered inter-party discussions on how to make share-holding structures in Korean conglomerates more transparent and boost shareholder values.

The National Policy Committee’s audit session is expected to focus on issues of complicated inter-subsidiary deals in chaebol, sources said.

The ruling party appears to intend to shake off its pro-chaebol image by responding to public sentiment against the conglomerates.

By doing so, it wants to gain momentum in pursuing labor market reform that it vowed to realize within this year.

“We will never evade calls for reforming conglomerates,” Rep. Cho Won-jin said during a party meeting. “Labor reform and chaebol reform are issues to be dealt with in parallel.”

The Park Geun-hye administration and the governing party stressed the urgent need to provide jobs for jobless young people by reforming the labor market.

The introduction of a peak wage system offering job security but a gradual reduction in the salaries for older employees after a certain age is a key strategy for the Park administration.

However, the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD) opposes such a drive, saying it will only create more non-regular workers and make it easier for employers to lay off employees.

The NPAD argues that the National Assembly should prioritize chaebol reform instead.

NPAD floor leader Rep. Lee Jong-kul in a press conference on Monday to mark his hundredth day in office renewed the party’s vow to focus on reforming conglomerate structure.

Raising corporate tax and imposing regulations on their unfair deals with small- and medium-sized companies needs to be considered to realize economic democratization, he said.