National Assembly is filled with low-quality bills

According to the bill information system of the National Assembly, National Assembly members participated in the joint submission of bills 797 times on average during the last three years since May 30, 2020, when the 21st National Assembly was launched. Five members put their names on over 2,000 bills during the same period, while 31 percent of all members participated in over 1,000 bill submissions. It exceeds the average number of bills reviewed and proposed directly by members, which stands at 66 on average. This is why National Assembly members are criticized for excessively lending their names without even knowing the details of bills, rather than faithfully preparing them.

The approval rates of bills have been decreasing while the number of proposed bills increased by a large margin over the past years. The 16th National Assembly members proposed 2,507 bills, while the 20th members put forward 24,141 bills. The 21st National Assembly proposed 22,046 bills as of Sunday with one year left in its term, and it is expected to exceed the number of bills proposed by the previous National Assembly. However, the approval rates of bills, which stood at 37.7 percent in the 16th National Assembly, continued to drop to 13.2 percent in the 20th and 9.4 percent in the 21st National Assembly. It results from a number of low-quality jointly-submitted bills that haven’t been through sufficient deliberation, failing to pass a plenary session of the National Assembly.

As joint submission became widely adopted, there were some ridiculous cases where the National Assembly members who participated in the joint submission of a bill decided to abstain from voting in a plenary session. According to The Dong-A Ilbo, four out of 10 National Assembly members with the highest number of joint submissions have abstained from voting for the bills with their names. While they explained that they made a wrong vote because they couldn’t remember all non-major bills, it is a lame excuse. It is certainly irresponsible that they didn’t care about how the bills with their names would affect the country’s future or people's lives.

The joint submission system for bills was introduced to raise the legislation standards and improve the quality of bills by obtaining agreement from over 10 National Assembly members. However, the recent practice of the joint submission system raises criticism that its initial intention has been tarnished. The excessive participation of members in joint submission is partially driven by the system where the number of proposed bills is considered when evaluating nomination for the general elections. The leadership of the ruling and opposition parties should conduct more qualitative evaluations by examining the appropriateness of bills, rather than the number of proposed bills.