Nov. 15 Legislative Report: Both Parties Fractured Over the Rural Special Account Act
Anatomy of Intra-Party Defections Revealed by Plenary Votes
A single bill—the amendment to the Special Account Act for Rural Structure Improvement—prompted a wave of lawmakers from both major parties to break with their party line. In the Oct. 1, 2026 plenary vote, the Democratic Party split with 86 in favor and 16 opposed, while the People Power Party, despite an official position of opposition, saw four members defect, voting 4 in favor to 40 against. The two parties fractured in opposite directions over the same bill.
The list of Democratic defectors included eight names, among them Reps. Kim Jung-ho, Kim Joon-hwan, and Uh Ki-goo. Because the allocation of rural special account funds is directly tied to district-level interests, the vote signals that even a bill under the jurisdiction of the Agriculture, Food, Rural Affairs, Oceans and Fisheries Committee is difficult to bind to a unified party line. The 16 opposing votes amounted to roughly 19 percent of total support, exceeding the usual scale of plenary defections.
The People Power Party also saw defections on the Broadcasting Act amendment, voting 56 in favor and 3 against, with Reps. Choi Soo-jin, Kim Min-jeon, and Lee Jin-sook breaking ranks. On the alternative bill for the Eco-Friendly Agriculture and Fisheries Promotion Act, Reps. Song Eon-seok, Lee Jin-sook, and Han Ki-ho voted against the party line. Notably, Rep. Lee Jin-sook defected on both bills, distancing herself from her party's rural and broadcasting policy directions.
Opposition Split Over Emergency Medical Act, Compounded by Budget Session Deadlock
The most closely watched moment was the vote on the alternative bill to partially amend the Emergency Medical Service Act. The People Power Party voted 14 in favor and 10 opposed—even its general meeting of lawmakers had split evenly. Ten members, including Reps. Kim Tae-kyu, Lee Jong-bae, and Park Chung-kwon, opposed the bill, which contains provisions strengthening accountability in emergency care—a point of sharp contention between the medical community and the government. The vote showed that even within the opposition, the weighing of patient safety against the burden on medical professionals was never fully resolved.
This intra-party split intersects with the People Power Party's turn toward street rallies while shunning the budget session. At a Supreme Council meeting on the 13th, Democratic Party floor leader Han Byung-do urged, "Just come to the National Assembly right in front of you," adding, "Take the energy from touring the country with a microphone and pour it into budget review and legislative action for the people." Analysts argue that the longer the legislative vacuum persists, the more frequent plenary vote flare-ups and party-line collapses become.
The 162-Trillion-Won Future Response Fund and the Committee-by-Committee Spending Race
The other axis of the legislative scene is budget review. Requests to increase the 162.3-trillion-won Future Response Fund exceeded 25 trillion won by Oct. 13. According to a Dong-A Ilbo analysis of data from 11 standing committees, six committees—including the Science, ICT, Broadcasting and Communications Committee; the Agriculture, Food, Rural Affairs, Oceans and Fisheries Committee; and the Strategy and Finance Committee—requested increases of 25.4838 trillion won across 54 programs.
Requests keep coming for cash-support programs targeting youth and rural communities, alongside substantial demands to expand district-level projects. With voices even within the ruling party raising concerns about the fund's sustainability, the spending race could well be seen as pork-barrel fiscal policy ahead of the 2028 general election. A visible divide has also emerged: the People Power Party calls for across-the-board cuts over control-of-the-Assembly concerns, while the government and the Democratic Party stress the fund's future-investment character.
The Special Committee on Budget and Accounts is the working center of the review. According to publicly available National Assembly information, Cho Kuk Innovation Party members Cho Young-hyun, Kim Dong-kyu, Choi Min-jun, Lee Jong-hwa, Kim Taek-woo, Ryu Jung-ho, and Byun Ki-soo, along with Justice Party member Kim Dong-kyu, sit on both the budget committee and the Education Committee—confirming a structure in which minor parties expand their review influence through committee assignments. The fact that Education Committee members simultaneously hold budget committee seats appears closely tied to the 4-trillion-won education funding debate.
Digital Asset Legislation: Lobbying Across Borders
Legislative competition is not confined to South Korea. In the United States, Circle, led by CEO Jeremy Allaire, has registered as a federal lobbyist under election law to respond to stablecoin-related legislation. Stablecoins—cryptocurrencies pegged to existing currencies such as the dollar—will reshape the payments and remittance markets the moment a regulatory framework is codified, which is why industry lobbying is so intense.
In the Texas legislature, a bill allowing municipalities to invest up to $10 million in Bitcoin is moving forward alongside discussions of safeguards. In South Korea, the mandatory tender offer provision of the Capital Markets Act amendment passed the plenary on Oct. 1, and assessments of its impact on the M&A market continue—showing digital asset and capital market legislation riding a wave at the same time.
In the short term, normalizing the budget review is the biggest variable. If the ruling and opposition parties cannot find a compromise on the 25-trillion-won increase requests for the Future Response Fund, the entire November Assembly calendar risks drifting. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes observed, "What we need is not the investigation of the obscure but the education of the evident"—what this Assembly needs may not be new bills but the work of clarifying the operating principles of the already-authorized 162-trillion-won fund.
The defector votes seen on the Rural Special Account Act and the Emergency Medical Act also signal a weakening of dependency-driven voting patterns. The tendency for party unity to collapse on bills involving regional interests is likely to recur, and the dual committee seats held by minor party members on the budget and Education Committees could make them kingmakers in budget negotiations. The clearest change left by this Assembly is that the center of gravity in lawmaking is shifting from party confrontation to committee work and individual lawmakers' choices.
