earticle

영어

he Republic of Korea (South Korea) has a dual legislation system for national legislation and local legislation, under which the National Assembly of the central government legislates acts, while the council of each local government legislates municipal ordinances. However, the local autonomy system was resumed by the constitutional amendment of 1987, and it was 1995 when local councils were eventually formed through the whole amendment of the Local Autonomy Act and the rearrangement of election law. Therefore, the legislation system of local councils is still at the transitional stage and has many loopholes and defects, compared with the legislation system of the National Assembly. In the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea, 9 aides and assistants are assigned to each assembly member, and the National Assembly Secretariat with the Expert Advisory Office and the Legislative Counsel Office assists assembly members, Standing Committees, and the National Assembly in performing their functions of legislation, together with the National Assembly Budget Office, the National Assembly Research Service and the National Assembly Library. In fact, thousands of experts in legislation and other fields works for such organizations. The National Assembly Research Service was established by referring to the Congressional Research Service (CRS) of the United States and has already reached a level not inferior to the CRS in its scale, expertise and activities in related fields. Moreover, the National Assembly recently established the National Assembly Futures Institute to strengthen its function of research. Meanwhile, the expertise and scale of human resources and functions of the National Assembly Legislative Counsel Office for legislative support are evaluated to have surpassed those of the Ministry of Government Administration which is comprehensively responsible for administrative legislation by the Government (Executive Branch). Quite unlike legislative expertise or the legislative support system of the National Assembly, those of local councils in Korea appear to still fall behind. The scale and expertise of expert advisors in local councils are incomparable with those of the National Assembly, and it would not be wrong to say that even such human resources are limitedly permitted only to metropolitan/provincial (City/Do) councils. Besides, no personal aide or assistant is assigned to local council members. Even educational programs and functions for local council members or public officials of local councils on legislative support are still at the incubating stage, as such programs and functions are provided by the State, i.e., the central government. Nevertheless, under the State-oriented rule of law, comprised of, so-called, the principle of no administrative organization without a law, the principle of no budget (finance) without a law and the principle of statutory reservation, all of such tasks are controlled by laws and budgets of the State, and the structure under which local councils can not develop relevant systems on their own persists. Local councils are organizations representing residents, as guaranteed by the Constitution. In order to normalize local councils as legislatures, a reform seems to be required to have them provided with legislative support functions, as provided to the National Assembly. What should be done first, among others, to attain this end are to assign personal aides and assistants to local council members, reinforce human resources and organization for legislative support, mainly for expert advisor offices, and to reform the legislation on local administrative agencies, so that each local council is given the authority to determine its own organization and missions independently. The local autonomy system in Korea can be referred to as a representative case of growing democracy of a newly emerging country, among the countries decolonized or newly established after the World War II. The establishment and development of the local autonomy system in Korea, particularly, the strengthening of local councils, can become a textbook for many newly emerging countries. In this regard, the implications for the world of the model that Korea plans to implement to strengthen legislative abilities of local councils will be considerably significant.