The 21st National Assembly Proposes 26,000 Bills, the Highest Ever... Passage Rate at the Lowest Ever

Number of Bills Proposed Emerges as Key Evaluation Indicator
Focus on Quantitative Assessment Over Legislative Quality
Excessive Polarization Between Ruling and Opposition Parties Leads to 'Cooperation Breakdown'

The 21st National Assembly recorded the highest number of bill proposals in history, but the approval rate dropped to the lowest level. There is an evaluation that legislative quality is deteriorating due to excessive duplicate and fragmented bill proposals, and cooperation is disappearing due to extreme partisan confrontations between the ruling and opposition parties.

According to the National Assembly Legislative Information System on the 19th, the number of bills proposed in the 21st National Assembly was counted at 25,806 as of that day. Compared to the 17th National Assembly 15 years ago (7,489 bills), it increased 3.4 times. The number of bills has been rapidly increasing by thousands each year: △17th 7,489 △18th 13,913 △19th 17,822 △20th 24,141.

The reason for the increase in bill proposals is that each lawmaker's legislative activity is evaluated as a major performance indicator. This was established during the civilian government era when quantitative evaluations such as the number of bill proposals were attempted mainly by civic groups, considering the difficulty of producing qualitative evaluations of lawmakers. The atmosphere in the National Assembly has become widespread, focusing on the number of proposals rather than analyzing the social costs of bill implementation.

Typical examples include so-called 'fragmented' proposals that split the same content, and the so-called 'recker law' phenomenon, which rapidly increases due to specific social issues such as the 2022 Itaewon tragedy. Professor Choi Jun-seon, emeritus professor at Sungkyunkwan University School of Law, pointed out, "Unlike the government's stringent legislation, there are no separate regulatory impact assessments or review regulations for lawmakers' legislation, so they indiscriminately submit bills and use them as tools for self-promotion."

Conversely, the approval rate has been rapidly declining every year. The bill approval rate of the 21st National Assembly was 11.4%, marking the lowest ever. The historical bill approval rates were △17th 25.5% △18th 16.9% △19th 15.7% △20th 13.2%. Despite the increasing number of bill proposals, the number of quality bills can be seen as decreasing.

The Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry analyzed in last year's report "Comparison of Major Countries' Legislative Systems and Implications" that legislative efficiency is significantly declining due to the increase in proposed bills, the decrease in bill approval rates, and the increase in discarded bills due to term expiration. In fact, in the 20th National Assembly, a total of 15,125 bills were discarded, accounting for 62.6% of all bills. This is an increase of 14.8 percentage points compared to the 17th National Assembly's discarded bills (3,582 bills, 47.8%).

There is also an analysis that excessive partisan politics at both extremes of the ruling and opposition parties is hindering legislative activities. Professor Jang Young-su of Korea University School of Law said, "As conflicts between the ruling and opposition parties become more acute, cooperation in the legislative process is not being achieved," adding, "More urgent than the issue of proposing and then abandoning bills is the mitigation of excessive political confrontation between parties and between the ruling and opposition."

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