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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| South Korea ruling party chief quits over failure to scrap anti-communism law |
| 2005-01-04 |
| The leader of South Korea's ruling Uri Party resigned yesterday over his party's failure to scrap an anti-communism law by the end of 2004. The National Security Law includes sweeping criminal provisions to ban contacts with North Koreans and any form of promotion of the North's communist ideology. The Uri Party considers the law as a relic of past dictatorships, obsolete under Seoul's policy of reconciliation and cooperation with Pyongyang, and had put forward a bill to scrap it. But the conservative opposition Grand National Party argued the communist North continued to pose a threat to national security and the law was still needed. "I am announcing that myself as party chairman and three central committee members are resigning today," Uri Party chairman Lee Bu-young told a party leadership council meeting. Attempts to scrap the National Security Law had split parliament and thrown South Korean politics into disarray after a boycott by opposition politicians led to a backlog of key bills to pass last year, including the national budget. |
| Posted by:Fred |