Parliamentary Legislation and Power Control
Authors:   Korean Constitutional Law Asscciation, Kim Jung-Hyun 
Published: October 2024

The legislative power is responsible for establishing the norms necessary for national life, but it also fulfills a power-control function that allows it to control other constitutional institutions. However, the legislative power functions in different ways depending on the distribution of seats in the National Assembly. If the ruling party has a majority of seats, the executive branch is more likely to use legislation to implement its policies. In the opposite case, the legislative power can be used to control the executive power.
Since the inauguration of the current government, the president and the National Assembly have been in serious confrontation and conflict. The National Assembly is pushing for its own legislation, and the president is responding by vetoing bills. The ruling party and the executive branch have also been using decree amendments instead of legislative amendments to create legal grounds.
The National Assembly, the people's representative body, has the power to legislate, so it should control administrative legislation and enhance the democratization of administrative legislation. Ideally, the executive branch should enact appropriate administrative legislation based on its expertise and experience in law enforcement, but there are cases of administrative legislation based on administrative convenience or enforcement decrees that go beyond the intent of the parent law. There are also institutional limitations that prevent effective control through notification under Article 98(2)(3) of the existing National Assembly Act. Therefore, it is necessary to control inappropriate administrative legislation by supplementing the existing system. It is undesirable to create executive orders that directly violate the intent of the legislation and neutralize the legislation.
The president's power to veto bills has inherent limitations and should be used sparingly. However, whether legal controls are available is another matter. Even if a president abuses his veto power, it is not easy to determine that it constitutes an impeachable offense. Similarly, the National Assembly can override the president's veto through a second reading, so there is a limit to the possibility of judging presidential and parliamentary authority disputes. It is also worth considering defining the limits of presidential veto power in future constitutional amendments.
The National Assembly has joint fiscal authority with the executive branch, so a bill that requires the government to spend more than a certain amount of money for a certain reason is not necessarily unconstitutional because it infringes on the government's right to budget. However, the majority party should be cautious about enacting earmarks unilaterally. Congress should avoid pushing legislation that accelerates the deficit.
Although impeachment by the National Assembly is part of the impeachment process, it should be recognized as an independent means of state control as it has a separate legal effect. Therefore, the National Assembly should explicitly define the constitutional or legal violations that constitute grounds for impeachment and strengthen the investigative powers of the Judicial Affairs Committee to ensure that the right to impeach becomes a clear state control power.