Hyungyup Kwon Proposes "National Assembly Audit Substantialization Act"

"Parliamentary Audit Results Should Be Officially Recorded and Accountability Must Be Ensured Until the End"

On May 19, Hyungyup Kwon, a member of the National Assembly representing Suncheon, Gwangyang, Gokseong, and Gurye in South Jeolla Province for the Democratic Party of Korea, announced that he had sponsored the “National Assembly Audit Substantialization Act”—which consists of the “Partial Amendment to the National Assembly Act” and the “Partial Amendment to the Act on the Inspection and Investigation of State Administration”—aimed at ensuring that the contents of parliamentary audits are officially recorded and government follow-up actions are monitored, even if the audit result report is not adopted.

Under current law, once a parliamentary audit is completed, the relevant standing committee (hereafter “standing committee”) prepares a parliamentary audit result report and submits it to the Speaker of the National Assembly. The National Assembly then adopts the report through a plenary session resolution.

In addition, the government and public institutions are required to take corrective action according to the report’s recommendations and report the outcomes to the National Assembly.

Hyangyeop Kwon, member of the Democratic Party of Korea.

However, despite the significant human, administrative, and social costs invested by both the legislative and executive branches in parliamentary audits, the adoption rate of audit result reports over the past five years has remained at only around 70 percent. As a result, there have been concerns that audit outcomes are not being finalized and that the obligation for the government and public institutions to implement corrective measures has not been enforced.

In particular, the Education Committee has not adopted a single result report in the past five years, and the Trade, Industry, Energy, SMEs and Startups Committee has done so only once.

Furthermore, in the United States Congress, every standing committee in both the House and the Senate is required to submit “Committee Activity Reports” summarizing their activities at the end of each Congress. In contrast, the National Assembly of Korea only has reporting requirements for special committees, and lacks a comprehensive official reporting system for the activities of its standing committees.

Accordingly, the proposed amendment to the National Assembly Act stipulates that standing committees must submit a “Standing Committee Result Report” summarizing their activities at the end of both the first and second halves of each legislative term, and that these reports must include the key findings of parliamentary audits.

The intention is to ensure that the contents of parliamentary audits are preserved as official records of state institutions and that the public’s right to be informed is guaranteed, even if the audit result report is not adopted.

In addition, the proposed amendment to the Act on the Inspection and Investigation of State Administration establishes a basis for the National Assembly Research Service to monitor whether the government has implemented the corrective actions requested during the audit, and to follow up on the key findings of the audit even if the audit result report has not been adopted.

Hyungyup Kwon emphasized, “Parliamentary audits should not end with merely pointing out problems. They must be a system that holds the executive branch accountable until corrective action is actually taken. We need to create a system that records the results of parliamentary audits as official records and monitors follow-up actions.”

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