국회의장-교섭단체 원내대표 긴급 회동…국회 파행 해법 못 찾아
Despite continuous meetings... an agreement between rival parties to normalize parliament seems far away.
A whole month was wasted in April,... and it's been pretty much the same situation in the first week of May.
Kim Min-ji has the latest from the national assembly.
Despite another attempt to put an end to the paralysis,... rival parties only reaffirmed their differences.
The floor leaders of the country's major parties met with the speaker of the National Assembly on Friday afternoon... in hopes of reaching an agreement to end the month-long standstill.
"I organized this meeting in a desperate manner. I am ashamed, and I apologize to the people. It's already very late but we must normalize parliament. I'm speaking for the people, not for myself."
But despite almost two hours of closed-door talks... the rival parties are still at square one.
Currently, the biggest area of dispute is whether the ruling Democratic Party of Korea will accept an independent counsel probe into an online opinion-rigging scandal... allegedly involving one of its lawmakers.
Opposition parties have called on the ruling party to agree to a probe in exchange for getting things moving again.
The ruling party indicated that it would accept their demand on two conditions: one, that the opposition agree to ratify the Panmunjom Declaration reached at last week's inter-Korean summit,... and two, that rival parties pass the government's extra budget bill.
Those two conditions prompted the floor leader of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party to go on a hunger strike until the ruling party agreed to accept the probe no strings attached.
It's unclear whether an agreement to normalize parliament will be reached anytime soon -- with rival parties so far apart.
On top of that, the term of the ruling party's floor leader comes to an end next week -- which doesn't give the parties a lot of time to achieve a breakthrough -- and the standoff could linger until the new whip takes his or her seat.
"But while that's one side of it,... there's also speculation that some sort of last-minute deal could come along... as a failure to do so would put even more pressure on the National Assembly -- especially having wasted a month in April... resulting in a growing stack of agenda items to go through.
Kim Min-ji, Arirang News."
