Speaker The constitution stipulates that the assembly is presided over by a
Speaker and
two Deputy Speakers, who are responsible for expediting the legislative process. The Speaker and Deputy Speakers are elected in a secret ballot by the members of the Assembly, and their term in office is restricted to two years. The Speaker is independent of party affiliation (to compared to the two vice-speakers who are affiliated with the two leading political parties), and the Speaker and Deputy Speakers may not simultaneously be government ministers. In order to meet the quorum, the
United Liberal Democrats, who then held 17 seats, arranged to "rent" three legislators from the
Millennium Democratic Party. The legislators returned to the MDP after the collapse of the
ULD-MDP coalition in September 2001.
Legislative process For a legislator to introduce a bill, they must submit the proposal to the Speaker, accompanied by the signatures of at least ten other assembly members. A committee must then review the bill to verify that it employs precise and orderly language. Following this, the Assembly may either approve or reject the bill.
Committees There are 17 standing committees which examine bills and petitions falling under their respective jurisdictions, and perform other duties as prescribed by relevant laws. • House Steering Committee • Legislation and Judiciary Committee • National Policy Committee • Strategy and Finance Committee • Education Committee • Science, ICT, Broadcasting and Communications Committee • Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee • National Defense Committee • Public Administration and Security Committee • Culture, Sports and Tourism Committee • Agriculture, Food, Rural Affairs, Oceans and Fisheries Committee • Trade, Industry, SMEs and Startups Committee • Health and Welfare Committee • Climate, Energy, Environment and Labor Committee • Land Infrastructure and Transport Committee • Intelligence Committee • Gender Equality and Family Committee Standing committees serve as the primary deliberative organs of the Assembly. Each committee corresponds to a policy domain—such as Strategy and Finance, Foreign Affairs and Unification, or Education—and is tasked with reviewing bills, conducting oversight, and managing legislative hearings. The Steering Committee functions as the central body for agenda coordination, enabling the majority party to exert significant influence over legislative scheduling (Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2022). Committee chairs are distributed proportionally among negotiation groups, though the ruling party typically retains control of key policy committees.
Election for 30 seats The National Assembly has 300 seats, with 254 constituency seats under
FPTP and 46 proportional representation seats. With electoral reform taken in 2019, the PR seats apportionment method was replaced by a variation of
additional member system from the previous
parallel voting system. However, 17 seats were temporarily assigned under parallel voting in the
2020 South Korean legislative election. Per Article 189 of Public Official Election Act, the PR seats are awarded to parties that have either obtained at least 3% of the total valid votes in the legislative election or at least five constituency seats. The number of seats allocated to each eligible party is decided by the formula: n_\text{initial} = \left\lfloor \frac{(n_{\text{Assembly}} - n_{\text{ineligibles}}) \times \text{PR votes ratio} - n_{\text{obtained constituencies}} + 1}{2}\right\rfloor where • = total number of seats in the National Assembly. • = number of seats obtained by ineligible parties and independents. • = number of constituency seats obtained by the party. • = total number of seats allocated for additional member system. If the integer is less than 1, then is set to 0 and the party does not get any seats. Then the sum of initially allocated seats is compared to the total seats for the additional member system and recalculated. n_\text{remainder} = \left(n_\text{ams}-\sum n_\text{initial}\right) \times \text{PR votes ratio} n_\text{final} = \begin{cases} n_\text{initial}+n_\text{remainder}, & \text{if }\sum n_\text{initial} n_\text{ams} \end{cases} Final seats are assigned through the
largest remainder method, and if the remainder is equal, the winner is determined by lottery among the relevant political parties. The
voting age was also lowered from 19 to 18 years old, expanding the electorate by over half a million voters. ==Legislative violence==