South Korea’s main parties wrapped up talks Friday on the special Sewol bill and proposals to dismantle the Coast Guard, ending months of prolonged negotiations.

The Sewol bill will authorize an investigation into the government’s alleged failure to rescue more passengers during the April ferry disaster.

Investigators will be nominated by lawmakers, legal experts, and the families of those killed in the Sewol accident. A state prosecutor, nominated by lawmakers and ultimately approved by the president, will lead a separate investigation.

The Coast Guard will merge into a new agency under the Prime Minister’s Office responsible for directing all rescue operations during any future disaster with fire departments and parts of the current Ministry of Security and Public Administration. The bill aims to create a unified chain of command to minimize confusion among government offices during disasters.

The Coast Guard’s role as the nation’s maritime police will be transferred to the National Police Agency.

The bills are expected to receive final approval at a plenary session on Nov. 7.

The agreements effectively end a tug-of-war that has dragged on since July. Party bickering over the bills had led to legislative deadlocks, suspending other key parliamentary activities until late September, when parties agreed to partially restart operations at the National Assembly.

Both parties welcomed the accords.

“I hope that the special Sewol bill will be able to prevent similar disasters. I sincerely hope that the bereaved families will also be somewhat soothed by the investigations,” Rep. Lee Wan-koo of the governing Saenuri Party said. Lee is the governing party’s floor leader.

“I fear that the agreements are a bit incomplete in that the (victims’) families may not be fully content,” said Rep. Woo Yoon-keun, floor leader of the main opposition party New Politics Alliance for Democracy.

“But we could no longer prolong discussions over these bills.”

Senior officials from the governing party and the opposition had been especially at loggerheads during the final week of talks on the suggested Coast Guard reforms.

Saenuri officials strongly advocated forming a comprehensive disaster-response agency that included the Coast Guard.

But NPAD legislators had feared that forming such a bureaucracy would create another breeding ground for cronyism. Initial prosecutors’ investigations into the Sewol disaster revealed widespread corruption between marine industry officials and related government regulators. NPAD officials had also raised the idea of creating a unified disaster response team under the control of the National Security Council at Cheong Wa Dae. But parliamentary sources say the main opposition was pressured to give in to the Saenuri Party’s stance on Coast Guard reforms as the governing party had yielded on key provisions of the special Sewol bill.

The special bill authorizes a prosecution team to sift through documents in the highest echelons of the South Korean government. Prosecutors could probe the presidential office, the Navy and the Coast Guard, though critics question whether they will be able to genuinely examine Cheong Wa Dae records.

Friday’s talks continued late into the evening, because of disagreements on other outstanding issues.

Opposition lawmakers proposed setting up a parliamentary investigation into former President Lee Myung-bak. Lee is alleged to have unnecessarily increased the national debt under his “resource diplomacy” policy and the four river restoration project.

Saenuri officials expressed mixed opinions, saying they would accept only if the opposition agreed to pass recently proposed reforms on pensions for public officials.

Talks on these issues were inconclusive.

By Jeong Hunny
(hj257@heraldcorp.com)