Assembly adopting contact-free meetings

Members of the National Assembly Special Committee on Budget and Accounts attend a meeting at the Assembly in Seoul, Monday. The lawmakers are seated apart from each other while the committee minimized the number of attendees at the meeting in keeping with the government's quarantine guidelines to prevent any further spread of COVID-19. Yonhap

By Jung Da-min

The National Assembly is seeking to adopt contact-free meetings amid the COVID-19 pandemic situation, to prevent possible disruptions to its legislative activities due to infections.

According to the government's new quarantine guidelines announced last week, Assembly meetings for legislative activities are technically exempt from a ban on gatherings of more than 50 people in indoor places and 100 in outdoor places. But the Assembly, which had undergone a temporary shutdown in February, is taking stricter quarantine measures than the guidelines, minimizing the number of people attending meetings.

The Assembly's Special Committee on Budget and Accounts, in particular, has been put to the test as the committee has the largest number of members, a total of 50 including the committee chief. Considering the number of required participants from relevant government departments, keeping to the government's Level 2 social distancing guidelines, currently in effect, did not seem adequate.

The budget committee therefore decided to split the 50 members into two groups, with each group spending four days each to screen policies in different scheduled times each day ― while the committee review used to take two days.

While a minimum number of government officials and lawmakers attending the meetings, the committee also reduced the number of public servants including stenographers and Assembly security staff.

“By dividing the lawmakers and the Cabinet members into two groups while the number of administrative staff was also cut to half, the committee would be able to keep the meeting participation below 50 people,” said Rep. Park Hong-keun, the committee's administrative secretary for the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) side.

As the regular sessions of the Assembly are scheduled to commence in September, the Assembly secretariat is further reviewing to find grounds to support holding video meetings and voting for the September session. As introducing such a contact-free online system requires an amendment to the National Assembly Act, some lawmakers of the DPK, including Rep. Jo Seoung-lae, proposed a bill to allow lawmakers to make decisions and votes through online channels instead of being present in the Assembly's plenary chamber.

“In the event of an urgent situation like the spread of an infectious disease or natural disaster, in which it is difficult for lawmakers to come to the National Assembly to attend meetings, we need to make it possible for lawmakers to remotely attend Assembly meetings with the permission of the National Assembly speaker,” Jo said. “We need to prepare ground rules so that lawmakers can participate in Assembly votes online when they cannot be in the meeting room.”

The Assembly has already secured a budget of 4.5 trillion won ($3.78 billion) for building a contactless meeting system for its standing committees in early July as part of this year's third extra budget.

Some lawmakers have introduced telecommuting systems for their offices in which their legislative staff work from home. Seminars and conferences held by lawmakers at the Assembly almost every day have been replaced with video meetings.

DPK Rep. Song Young-gil, chairman of the Assembly's Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee, said Monday that his office adopted a remote working system as a preemptive measure against the virus.

“The COVID-19 situation is serious. What is even more worrisome is the virus is spreading like a ghost without us even realizing it,” Song said.

Rep. Ryu Ho-jeong of the minor opposition Justice Party, who previously worked at an IT company before joining the party, urged the Assembly to adopt online governance systems for the “contact-free” era. Her office introduced a remote working system last Thursday.