The Kim Young-ran act must not be defanged with dubious exemptions

The results of lawmakers voting at the National Assembly in Seoul on Mar. 3 are posted on an overhead screen, with 226 in favor, four opposed and 17 abstaining. (by Lee Jeong-woo, staff photographer)

No sooner had the Kim Young-ran Act passed the National Assembly than calls were made for it to be revised.

There are signs that a constitutional debate is brewing as well, with the Korean Bar Association announcing plans on Mar. 4 to ask the Constitutional Court to review the law.

For such calls to be made before the law has even taken effect - before the promulgation of the enforcement orders and regulations that will clarify how the law will be executed - is not only hasty but also inappropriate. These calls sound disturbingly like attempts to tamper with a law that an absolute majority of the public agrees with, at least in regard to its intent and outline.

Considering the difficulty with which the law passed the National Assembly, now is the time to apply our wisdom and efforts to enable this law to be implemented effectively. The law must not be defanged by adding dubious exceptions or undermining its original intent on the pretext of revising and supplementing it.

In that sense, haste must be made to implement the other pillar of the law, blocking conflict of interest. In its original conception, the Kim Young-ran Act was supposed to not only ban illicit requests and bribes but also to block conflict of interest.

During the debate in the National Assembly, the provisions about blocking conflict of interest came under fire because of serious concerns about their unconstitutionality. But it is only when both of these two pillars of the law are implemented together that the law’s objectives of eliminating corruption and creating a transparent society can be fully achieved.

Whether it means passing another law or revising the current one, we must ensure that these two legal principles are brought to bear at the same time.

But if the Kim Young-ran Act is to be executed effectively, these are not the only points that will need some work. Because of the haste with which the press and other areas of the private sector were added to the law during deliberation in the National Assembly, absolutely no measures were taken to obviate the danger of the benevolent intent of the law being exploited to tame or subjugate the press.

Despite a massive increase of the authority of the prosecutors and the police, only flimsy measures were put in place to block the arbitrary enforcement of the law. While lawmakers are apparently talking about expanding the scope of the law to cover other areas of the private sector, including labor unions, civic groups, and lawyers, this is no more than a ruse to neutralize the act by “muddying the waters.”

In order to achieve the original intent of the law - which was to uproot corruption among lawmakers and senior public officials - it is urgent that we set right these distorted sections of the law.

It is also important that the standards of law enforcement be clearly stated in the law’s enforcement orders. The only way that the law will fulfill its proper function is for specific problems to be listed and regulated in these enforcement orders.

Wisdom is also needed to ensure that the law is implemented smoothly while minimizing its ramifications on the real economy. Most of all, the law must be revised and supplemented in a way that will maximize its effectiveness.

　

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