The National Assembly’s 100-day regular session is set to begin Tuesday with the two major parties seeking to gain an advantage ahead of next year’s elections.

The ruling and main opposition parties are expected to clash over bills being pushed by the Park Geun-hye administration to reform the nation’s labor, education and finance sectors.

Two rounds of parliamentary inspections are also set to kick off in the second week of September and the first week of October to assess Park’s state agendas and the performances of state offices and agencies that operate with taxpayers’ money.

The governing Saenuri Party has vowed to pass a set of bills aimed at overhauling the job market as soon as a trilateral committee on labor reform reaches an agreement.

The main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy, for its part, is expected to go on the offensive against the Saenuri Party’s drive by setting up its own agenda. It has established a set of four key agenda items to promote the public‘s livelihood, economic revival, labor and management relations and national unity.

The rival parties are also expected to put North Korea at the top of the agenda after a breakthrough deal that defused military tensions on the Korean Peninsula last week. Saenuri is set to call for an increase in the defense budget and for the passage of a North Korea human rights bill, while the NPAD will be adding pressure on the government to lift an economic sanction that bans all inter-Korean trading except for a joint industrial complex in Gaeseong and to resume the long-stalled tour program to Mount Geumgangsan.

The opposition party has already begun pressing the ruling party and the government to release details of special allowances spent by state agencies. The ruling party has raised concerns about the NPAD demands, citing the confidentiality of certain activities, particularly regarding the National Intelligence Service.

The NPAD also plans to grill a number of leaders of family-controlled businesses during the parliamentary inspection sessions to focus on chaebol reform. 

By Cho Chung-un (christory@heraldcorp.com)