United Future Party Holds Consecutive 'Child Rights' Seminars... A Step Toward Accompanying the Vulnerable?

Kim Jong-in, Emergency Committee Chairman of the United Future Party, is attending the Emergency Committee meeting held at the National Assembly on the 16th and delivering an opening remark. Photo by Yoon Dong-joo doso7@

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Hyemin] The United Future Party, which has adopted "walking with the weak" as the party's new value, has begun to focus on "children's rights." Centered on first-term lawmakers, they are consecutively holding seminars and proposing bills. This is interpreted as an attempt to expand the identity of the conservative party from focusing on security and market economy to children's rights and further to the low birthrate issue.

On the afternoon of the 23rd, United Future Party lawmaker Yang Geum-hee will hold an "Expert Roundtable for the Eradication of Child Abuse Crimes" at the National Assembly, together with the party's Policy Committee and Yeouido Institute. This is the first time the party organization and lawmakers' offices have jointly held a seminar, and it is also an unusual scene that the first topic is "children's rights." Emergency Committee Chairman Kim Jong-in and Policy Committee Chairman Lee Jong-bae will also attend the roundtable to emphasize the necessity of eradicating child abuse crimes.

In a phone interview, Representative Yang explained the background of hosting the seminar, saying, "When looking at families where child abuse occurs, many of them generally have difficult economic conditions. There are many cases of inheritance, and children themselves are socially vulnerable." She added, "From a broader perspective, this is an issue that the United Future Party must face, and from the conservative values standpoint, it is something we must solve." Representative Yang, a former civic group activist, plans to propose a bill incorporating policy opinions gathered through the roundtable.

Representative Kim Woong will hold a relay series of three discussion forums over three weeks, starting with the first forum on the 25th, titled "Eradication of Child, Gender, and School Violence Murders." Professor Lee Soo-jung of the Department of Criminal Psychology at Kyonggi University is scheduled to participate as a presenter at the first forum focusing on child violence. Representative Kim Mi-ae held a roundtable on the 15th to "Increase the Adoption Rate of Abandoned Children in Baby Boxes," and has continuously shown interest in adoptive families and single-parent families, including proposing a bill to ease the reporting requirements so that unmarried fathers raising children can smoothly register their child's birth.

The fact that women's, children's, and labor issues, which had been neglected by the United Future Party, have begun to be freely discussed is analyzed to be influenced by Chairman Kim's consistent emphasis on "walking with the weak."

On the 17th, Chairman Kim attended the first meeting of the Special Committee on Party Platform Revision and stated that the party's goal should be to focus on solving the problems of polarization and poverty gaps between social classes, which are shadows of our society. Then, on the 19th, he met with first-term lawmakers and urged, "To change the United Future Party, let's not be trapped in past traditional concepts," and added, "When the party transforms into one that stands with and walks alongside the weak, its future scope of action can be broader."

The diversification of the party's personnel composition through the general election has also had an impact. While there were many so-called elites such as legal professionals and bureaucrats in the past, this time the base has broadened to include former Korean Confederation of Trade Unions members (Kim Hyung-dong), female worker-origin human rights lawyers (Kim Mi-ae), and members from the Women's Voters Federation (Yang Geum-hee).

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.