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Why should private journalist be regulated by Kim Young-ran Act?

Why should private journalist be regulated by Kim Young-ran Act?

Posted March. 03, 2015 07:42,   

한국어

The Anti-Corruption and Conflicts of Interest Act (so-called Kim Young-ran Act) that includes the private journalists and personnel of private schools will be passed through in the plenary session of the National Assembly on Tuesday. Previously, ruling Saenuri floor leader Yoo Seung-min and New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD) floor leader Woo Yoon-geun were delegated with negotiation authority from the general meeting of the Assembly members and agreed on revision of the bill to remove a provision to mandate public officials to report on their family members’ receiving gifts and reduce the scope of family members into a spouse. However, the provisions for journalists of private media and staff of private schools were kept as the original version.

The purpose of Kim Young-ran Act is to prevent illegal solicitation to public officials or semi-public servants who are paid with tax, especially to prevent illegal solicitation that is hard to punish by the criminal law. However, the National Policy Committee included journalists of private media outlets into the law under excuse of striking a balance with staff of KBS and EBS, public broadcasting companies, during the review process. Private journalists are not public officials paid by taxpayers’ money. On the pretext of fairness between public and private schools, the committee included teachers of autonomous private high schools and professors of private universities whose income are not from the state coffers.

Obviously, including private journalists and staff of private schools is a violation of constitutions. It is an excessive infringement of autonomy in the private sector guaranteed by the constitution. Taking out a specific part of the private sector and treating the taken-out part differently from the rest of the private sector is also a violation of the principle of equality. Kim Yong-ran, the former chairwoman of the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission, would be surprised to see such provisions that are totally different from the original intention. Even so, the ruling and opposition lawmakers hasted to reduce the scope of ‘family members’ that may affect themselves without paying attention to this issue at the general meeting of the Assembly members.

Reportedly, lawmakers said “Let’s pass the bill first and revise later.” If true, it is totally inappropriate for a lawmaker to make such remarks to pass an obviously unconstitutional bill and suggest revision afterwards. Irresponsible habit has taken root in the National Assembly, where lawmakers recklessly make bills expecting the Constitutional Court to rule the bill unconstitutional. As the Constitutional Court will rule against unconstitutional bills, the lawmakers seem to enjoy freedom to propose bills carelessly as if passing a ball to the court.

Floor leaders of ruling and opposition parties and Secretary General of the Legislation-Judiciary Committee agreed on March to revise the law that a public official is punished for receiving gifts only when the gift is related to the official’s duty and to have a grace period for 18 months after passing the bill. This is the same as washing down the act.

Unlike the original bill designed to unconditionally punish public officials who receive gifts exceeding the worth of 1 million won, public officials can take advantage of this loophole to get away from the punishment by claiming that the gift is not related to their duties. It is a shame for the ruling and the opposition to enact such law that can infringe freedom of the media by joining forces.