The audit of government agencies rumbles on at South Korea's National Assembly.
Up for debate on Tuesday: the Moon administration's sharp minimum wage hikes and possible changes to the national pension system.
As per usual, sparks flew as the rival parties clashed over the highly contentious issues.
Kim Min-ji reports.
Opposition parties ramped up their offensive against the government's minimum wage hike during the inspection Tuesday of several state-run bodies that help support small businesses.
They said the Moon Jae-in administration's policies have forced small businesses to shed workers... or even shut down.
And with job growth weak,.... they claimed the government is forcing the public sector to pump out jobs.
"The government's job creation policies have failed. And now, the government is pushing public corporations to provide short-term jobs. Even though they don't have the money,... they're creating useless positions that don't even have any work to do. This is no way to cover up the jobs numbers."
The ruling party defended the policies and called on the state-run bodies to carry out the government's agenda of support for small business owners and the self-employed.
"The debt of the self-employed has reached about 600 trillion won, which is very serious. And the Moon Jae-in government is doing a very good job helping them to start anew by dealing with non-performing loans."
Also facing harsh criticism was the National Pension Service, whose enormous fund, the opposition claimed, might be at risk of running out.
They also criticized a potential reform that some worry could mean people pay into it fund for longer period of time,... and get smaller pension checks later.
However, the ruling party said the opposition should not stoke fear... and called for any changes to come by public consent.
Another sprawling issue at parliament is a hiring scandal involving the operator of the Seoul subway.
It was found that the state-run Seoul Metro transferred nearly 13-hundred contract workers to permanent status as of March -- 108 of whom were relatives of current or former employees.
Opposition parties are calling for a wide-reaching parliamentary probe.
"Making irregular workers permanent looks nice from the outside. But filling even these kinds of positions as personal favors -- is this what the government is trying to do?"
However, the ruling party insists that they have to first determine whether the allegations are true.
"First we need to go through the process of getting our facts straight. A lot of the allegations are groundless,... or have been exaggerated."
The ruling party says they will see if there is a need for a probe once the parliamentary audit is over.
In the meantime, tensions on that front are expected to escalate.
Kim Min-ji, Arirang News.
