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Lawmakers in the National Assembly passed a series of long-pending bills as this month's
extraordinary session wrapped up today. But they remain divided over a controversial
revision to the nation's pension system. Our National Assembly correspondent Ji Myung-kil
has the details. Lawmakers in the National Assembly passed a series of key livelihood
bills on Friday, the last day of this month's extraordinary session.
Among the bills passed was a revision to the personal information protection act, which
requires financial institutions and public organizations to encrypt a client's 13-digit
identification number when storing them in a database.
"The parliamentary security committee has thoroughly revised this bill to fully protect
our citizens and the specifics will be written into a presidential decree."
The change was made in response to a massive data leak last month affecting some 20 million
card holders at three credit card firms and millions more clients at financial institutions
in the months prior to that. Lawmakers also passed a bill that will allow
the parliament to more swiftly appoint an independent counsel for investigations into
an array of sensitive crimes ranging from corruption to wrongdoing by government agencies.
The bill creates a parliamentary standing committee that will be responsible for making
the independent counsel appointments. In the past, a new committee was created for
each new appointment.
"The standing committee for appointing independent counselors will consist of seven government
officials."
The bill also allows the formation of a special investigative body... charged with monitoring
the relatives of the president or senior Blue House members in order to prevent ethical
breaches. Lawmakers, however, will not be subject to
surveillance.
"The rival parties were unable to overcome their differences on whether to link the basic
pension scheme to the national pension system. That means they failed to put up a vote on
a bill that would offer a monthly pension to senior citizens over the age of 65 in the
bottom 70 percent of the income bracket. Ji Myung-kil, Arirang News."