The National Assembly pushed to wrap up long-delayed issues such as the trade-related bills and the budget before the end of the year.

In its second-to-last plenary session on Thursday, the parliament passed a series of subordinate bills to the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement.

The list included a trade procedure bill which enhances the assembly’s authority to monitor inter-government trade pacts.

The bill to preserve profit for farmers was, however, delayed to Friday’s session, as lawmakers demanded further discussion.

Parties also underwent 11th-hour negotiations on next year’s budget plan.

On Wednesday, the ruling Grand National Party and the main opposition Democratic Unified Party compromised on cutting 4 trillion won ($3.5 billion) from the original amount submitted by the government.

The parties, however, argued over the details of the allocation.

“Though the total amount has been fixed, we still differ over some disputed projects including the Jeju naval base construction,” said Rep. Kang Gi-jung, DP negotiator for the parliamentary budget committee.

Parties also reached a general agreement to increase the welfare budgets but the liberal camp made last-minute moves to further increase the amount up to 5 trillion won, despite GNP backlashes.

The budget bill is to be submitted to the plenary session on Friday, together with the controversial advertising broker bill, referred to as the media rep bill.

The disputed bill involves allocating a single advertising broker for public stations such as KBS, MBC and EBS and a separate representative for private stations such as SBS and the new cable broadcasters.

Parties are conflicted on whether or not to include the new private channels in the regulation and the related talks broke off but the DP pledged Wednesday that the issue must reach a conclusion within the year.

The Constitutional Court ruled back in 2008 that the Korea Broadcast Advertising Corporation’s monopoly on televised advertisements was unconstitutional but the resulting media rep bills have long been pending in the parliament amid inter-party disputes.

By Bae Hyun-jung (tellme@heraldcorp.com)