South Korea National assembly brawl: Ex-PM Hwang Kyo-ahn among 29 politicians charged

They include former PM Hwang Kyo-ahn, who also served as South Korea’s acting president before the inauguration of current leader Moon Jae-in in 2017. Hwang is now leader of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party.

The charges relate to a mass brawl in April last year, when lawmaker Chae Yi-bai and four of his aides were trapped in his office after Liberty Korea Party members blocked his door with a sofa. Chae, a member of the minority liberal-conservative Bareunmirae Party, said he considered ripping out the window to escape. He eventually got out after police arrived at the scene.

The chaos was over the government’s electoral reform bill, which makes the allocation of the National Assembly’s 300 seats more proportional to votes and boosts the presence of minor parties in parliament. The opposition claimed that the bill would “rip the assembly into pieces and render it a multi-party system.”

Other Liberty Korea Party members barricaded themselves in three committee rooms, where a vote on the bill was due to be held. That descended into a much bigger confrontation, as Democratic Party members attempted to get into the committee rooms and to free Chae from his office.

Despite the altercation — and another attempt by the opposition to filibuster the vote — lawmakers passed the bill at the end of December. It will come into force before the country’s next general election in April.

If convicted of disrupting a National Assembly meeting — a law created in 2012 after several brawls at the legislature — lawmakers could face up to five years in prison or a fine of up to 10 million won ($8,600). If lawmakers receive prison time, or a fine of more than 5 million won ($4,300), they will lose their seats and be barred from running in an election for five years.

Na, the prosecutor’s office spokesperson, said 2,200 hours of security camera and media footage had been analyzed. The office decided to suspend the indictment of 83 lawmakers and aides who only had minimal participation in the altercation, he said.

South Korea has a colorful history of physical confrontations in its National Assembly.

In 2004, a scuffle broke out as lawmakers voted on the impeachment of then-president Roh Moo-hyun. In 2011, an opposition politician set off a tear gas canister, hoping to derail the passing of a free trade agreement with the United States.