Opposition by attrition: Filibusters wear down Assembly, but can they win public over?

In South Korea's National Assembly, filibusters to prolong a debate on a bill are becoming an increasingly common tactic for opposition parties to keep the ruling Democratic Party in check.

But what was supposed to be an unlimited debate mostly ends up being short-lived. The liberal parties have enough votes in the legislature to force an end to the debate after 24 hours, and move on to pass the bill that is being filibustered.

Only a handful of lawmakers attend filibuster speeches, taking turns doing so.

As these procedures become routine and cliched, filibusters appear to be losing their original impact. But the main opposition People Power Party, which has fewer than two-fifths of lawmakers in the 300-seat National Assembly, has struggled to find an alternative option to deal with its rival, which holds a majority.

The conservative opposition launched a series of filibusters Feb. 24 against judicial reforms and other legislation, only to see them voted down after the 24-hour grace period.

As of Monday, the 22nd National Assembly, which began in May 2024, has gone through just over 650 hours of filibusters, as the People Power Party filibustered 28 bills in the current Assembly.

The People Power Party had sought to delay the passage of other remaining bills tabled in a plenary session on Feb. 24 in a show of protest against the Democratic Party's unilateral legislative push, which would have closed the plenary session on Wednesday.

But the conservative party withdrew that stance Sunday afternoon, citing a need to table the bill to turn Daegu into a megacity. This ended a filibuster over a revision to the Referendum Act in about 19 hours, leading to the passage of other remaining bills without filibusters and ending the plenary session Sunday.

Filibusters are becoming a source of fatigue for the National Assembly.

Rep. Woo Won-shik, speaker of the National Assembly, said in a news conference earlier in February that filibusters are losing their purpose of changing public opinion on particular agenda items.

"A lawmaker speaks on the podium, and two lawmakers are attending the speech. Who would ever watch this?" Woo said. "Both sides are just wasting time. This is really wrong."

Woo, a five-term lawmaker, added that the recent filibusters contrasted with the historic eight-day filibuster in 2016, before the passage of the Act on Counterterrorism for the Protection of Citizens and Public Security.

At that time, before the bill's passage, scores of lawmakers engaged in heated debate over a clause that critics argued could leave ordinary citizens vulnerable to surveillance by the spy agency.

The ruling party at the time did not have the votes to halt the filibuster.

This Assembly's frequent filibusters also raised doubts over whether filibuster sessions must be moderated by either a speaker or a deputy speaker of the National Assembly.

While lawmakers took turns speaking on the podium, Speaker Woo and Deputy Speaker Reps. Lee Hack-young and Joo Ho-young were the only members of the National Assembly who were authorized to moderate the sessions.

But with Joo of the People Power Party refusing to moderate the sessions, citing his right to do so, Woo and Lee, both of whom are liberal lawmakers, have taken turns. From May 2024 until the end of 2025, Woo and Lee evenly shared the burden of moderating the sessions that amounted to 510 hours, according to Woo.

Following a revision to the National Assembly Act in January, Reps. Han Byung-do and Shin Jeong-hoon, both of whom are Democratic Party lawmakers, became the first to moderate filibuster sessions while not being either a speaker or a deputy speaker of the National Assembly.

Moreover, Democratic Party Rep. Kim Jun-hyuk proposed a bill on Feb. 13 to toughen the requirements for launching and sustaining a filibuster. The pending bill indicates that a filibuster could be suspended once the filibuster session lacks a quorum.