People Power Party (PPP) Floor Leader Song Eon-seok warned Wednesday that South Korea will become "a vastly different country" before and after the passage of the so-called "three judicial reform bills" being pushed through by the Democratic Party of Korea.
"This entails changes far too significant to be captured by terms like 'destruction of the judiciary' or 'destruction of separation of powers,'" Song said at a party general meeting at the National Assembly.
The three bills include legislation on judicial distortion, constitutional appeals against court rulings, and expansion of Supreme Court justices.
Song criticized that the bills would transform Korea into "a country where even the Constitution becomes tattered by legislation made in the National Assembly, where even judges—the last bastion of justice—face suppression of their freedom of conscience, and where all important laws and policies are manipulated and fluctuate based on decisions made at the ruling party's general meetings."
"To summarize all this chaos in one line: the laws of this land will be reduced to weapons wielded by those in power," he said.
The floor leader framed the opposition's resistance as a historical mission, stating that the party's task is "to leave a record that we foresaw the future that would unfold due to these destructive judicial laws and opposed them, and that we began our fight to abolish them."
Song expressed confidence that "there will certainly be public judgment against the political forces that ruthlessly and unilaterally pushed through these bad laws."
"Until that day comes, we must endure, persevere, rise up and fight," he added. "History will record how this day and this era are remembered, and equally judge how well we fulfilled our historical duty as a minority opposition party."