With the June 3 local elections about a month away, Korea's ruling and opposition parties are shifting into full election mode, bringing first-half standing committee activities of the 22nd National Assembly to a close. As deliberations on pending bills are expected to halt until second-half committee compositions are finalized after the June elections, the launch of the "Property Oversight Agency" and other initiatives promoted by the government and ruling party are likely to miss their year-end targets.
According to the National Assembly on the 5th, each standing committee has either completed or is preparing to complete its final official schedule before the end of its first-half term later this month. The Land, Infrastructure and Transport Committee concluded its first-half activities with a plenary meeting held on the 30th of last month, and the National Policy Committee will wrap up with its bill review subcommittee meetings on the 11th and 12th.
Amid this, the bill to establish the Property Oversight Agency, a key policy task of the Lee Jae-myung administration, is expected to be excluded from the National Policy Committee's bill subcommittee agenda due to opposition from rival parties. "There seems to be no reason for the People Power Party, which chairs the National Policy Committee, to accommodate the Democratic Party during the final bill review," an official from the committee said.
The ruling party and the government had initially aimed to pass the Property Oversight Agency Establishment Act during the first half of this year and launch the agency in the second half. However, since the bill takes effect six months after promulgation, failing to clear the National Assembly in the first half would inevitably push the launch of the new organization into next year. The Democratic Party is considering taking over all standing committee chairmanships, including the National Policy Committee, in the second half to accelerate bill processing.
In addition, the amendment to the "Act on Vacant Houses and Small-Scale Housing Improvement," which would integrate management of small-scale redevelopment projects to speed up housing supply, has been pending at the Land, Infrastructure and Transport Committee for more than seven months since it was submitted to the National Assembly in October last year. A bill that would allow the Korea Land and Housing Corporation (LH) to directly develop public housing sites rather than selling them to the private sector — aimed at accelerating supply — has not even been proposed, raising concerns that the momentum behind government policy is weakening.
